
Glass. 



"-(H 



^.^v^ 




«-■? 






HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD 



A3 DEMONSTKATBD BY THE 



LIFE AND LAKGUAGE 



AAAILLIAM COBBETT 



TO WHICH IS ADDED 



COBBETT'S ENG-LISH GRAMMAR WITH NOTES 

BY 
/ 

ROBERT WATERS 

Teacher of Language and Literature in the Hoboken (K. J.) Academy 



NEW 



YORK: ^^/".-^r .. ,.v;-<c; ::^;^'-- 



JAMES W. PRATT, 75 FULTON STREET. 

1883 



COPYRIGHT, 1883, 

BY 

EGBERT WATERS, 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

ME. EICHAED GEANT WHITe's VIEWS; AND SOME OTHEE VIEWS. 

Among recent writers on language, there is perhaps 
not one who has written more w^isely, or exhibited a finer 
perception of the true means of acquiring the power of 
expression, than Mr. Richard Grant White. His two 
works, "Words and their Uses" and "Every-day English," 
are marvelously interesting and full of sound, wholesome 
instruction. These books will, by any one uninformed of 
his novel views, be read with surprise and even with in- 
credulity ; but they cannot fail to impress the reader with 
the conviction, that they possess a measure of truth which 
is confirmed by experience. Mr. White condemns as alto- 
gether useless, nay, as worse than useless, the grammar 
studies of our pubHc schools, and x^ecommends the study 
of authors instead of go^ammars. 

Now, although I agree in the main w^ith Mr. White's 
views concerning the character of our tongue, and the 
unprofitableness of grammar studies in general ; although 
I fully agree with him that our language must be learned, . 
chiefly, from hearing good speakers and reading good 
writers ; still I maintain that this is not enough ; that in 
order to be able to write correctly, and to be suee that one 
does write correctly, a fair knowledge of well-defined prin- 
ciples is necessary; that the study of these principles, 
rightly pursued, is not only necessary to enable one to 
speak and write correctly, but is useful as a discipline of 
the mind and as a means of general culture. Theory 
MUST "be combined with practice. For although one may, 
by a large acquaintance v^ith good writers and speakers, 
acquire a good ear and a discriminating sense of correct 
language, these are not infallible guides ; a person with 



iv Editor's Preface. 

the finest culture of this kind may commit the most egre- 
gious blunders. It is precisely this which is so forcibly 
displayed by Cobbett in his "Six Lessons"; where he 
shows that persons of the highest rank, the finest taste, 
the gentlest training, and the most extensive learning 
have committed errors of the coarsest kind. 

Mr. White says: "In speaking or writing English, we 
have only to choose the right words and put them in the 
right places, respecting no laws but those of reason, con- 
forming to no order but that which we call logical." But 
many people must be taught what are " the laws of reason, 
and the order which we call logical." Without some in- 
struction in these matters, common people will hardly 
ever write half-a-dozen lines without a blunder. Take the 
mechanics and shopkeepers, for instance, and you will 
find that most of them are unable to announce even their 
names and business correctly. Not to mention the ludi- 
crous and amusing errors of which Mr. Wliite himself 
gives specimens — the "inauguration of a sample-room," 
the "home-made hotel," etc. — we have only to look at any 
common sign to be convinced of the truth of this state- 
ment. " John Smith, Iron Foundry," " John Jones, Cigar- 
Store." John Smith is not an iron foundry, nor John 
Jones a cigar-store. We know that they mean, "John 
Smith, Iron Fotmder," or "John Smith's Iron Foundry," 
"John Jones, Cigar-maker," or "John Jones's Cigar- 
Store " ; but they must be taught, to sax what they mean, 
and the only way to do this is to instruct them in the 
principles of grammar; or, if you please, in "the laws of 
reason and the order which we call logical." 

Boys and girls must be taught to write their thoughts 
as well as to speak them. It is vain to say otherwise. 
And the only question is, what is the best way of teaching 
them. Mr. White will not listen to the teaching of gram- 
mar in any shape or form whatever. Well, ai far as the 
text-book method, the rule-and- word-cramming method 



Editor's Preface. v 

of the public schools, is concerned, he is perfectly right ; 
there is very little profit to be derived from it. But there 
is a right and a wrong way of doing everything. Mr. 
White has never, I imagine, been a teacher; he knows 
nothing of the actual work of teaching young people how 
to write correctly; he knows nothing of teaching^ I im- 
agine, except by writing, which is an easy, pleasant, and 
convenient way of teaching — I say not a word against its 
effectiveness — for no questions are asked, except such as 
may be again answered in writing, at one's leisure, and 
without interruption or interpellation. If he were a 
teacher, he would find it impossible to teach boys and 
girls anything of correct speech without giving them some 
knowledge of the laws of speech — as impossible as it 
would be to teach them any science or art without men- 
tioning the name or explaining the meaning of any one of 
its parts. I do not say that this knowledge must be com- 
mujiicated by means of a book ; it may be communicated 
without a book; indeed, much better without a book. 
But taught it must be. For when you have shown boys 
and gu-ls how to write a composition, and they have writ- 
ten it, how are you going to show them or explain to them 
its errors, or how to improve their language, without ever 
mentioning anything of the principles of grammar? Can 
there be any better way of showing a boy that "He writes 
beautiful" is wrong, than by explaining to him the differ- 
ence between the adjective and the adverb? Can there be 
any better way of showing him that " The book lays on 
the table " is wrong, than by explaining to him the differ- 
ence between a transitive and an intransitive verb ? Can 
there be any better way of showing that "I am taller 
than him " is wrong, than by explaining to hiTn the differ- 
ence between .the nominative and the objective case? 
That " The color of the leaves ai-e green " is wrong, than 
by showing him the natiu-e of subject and predicate, and 
that the one must agree with the other? These explana- 



vi Editor's Preface. 

tions, properly done, will be like taking him out of a thick 
fog, and putting him in broad sunlight ; taking him out 
of a perplexing, bewildering maze, and putting him on 
a plain high-road, with a chart or compass by which he 
may walk right on to his goal, with perfect ease, and in 
perfect confidence. 

I have heard of a lawyer who, at a banquet of gentle- 
men of his cloth, brought out a toast " To the man who 
writes his own will." Why? Because he is likely to 
make use of language that will admit of question as to 
its meaning ; and thus give work to the lawyers. Now I 
maintain that the man who acquires a clear comprehension 
of the principles of our language may write in such a 
manner as to defy the astutest lawyer to make his 
words mean anything else than what he intends them 
to mean ; which is something that cannot be said of the 
man who learns only by talking and reading. Such a man 
lives in the land of uncertainty, and never knows whither 
he is going or whence he has come. 

Grammai', properly considered and properly taught, is 
nothing but an unfolding of general principles, which 
must be applied, more or less, in all languages ; every one 
of which principles has a reason for its existence, and the 
majority of which may be made as plain and evident as a 
statement in mathematics. Mr. White says that nobody 
that thinks of his grammar while writing will ever write 
a sentence worth reading. Of course, no boy or girl 
ought for a moment to think of his grammar while vwiting 
a composition; in fact, nobody ever does think of his 
grammar while intent on putting down his thoughts. 
But when the work is done, when he has vn'itten it, then 
he ought to be able to review it understandingly, and see 
that it conforms to "the laws of reason and the order 
which we call logical"; otherwise he will, in nine cases 
out of ten, write incorrectly. 

I fully agree with Mr. White, that all the grammars of 



PREFACE. 



WHY AND FOR WHOM THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN. 



At a time when the conviction is fast gaining ground 
that the language studies pursued in our public and pri- 
vate schools utterly fail to attain the object aimed at, and 
that the one thing needful, to obtain a good practical 
knowledge of the English tongue, is the careful study of 
the best, most idiomatic English writers, it is thought 
that an account of the life and writings of one of Eng- 
land's most powerful writers and most remarkable char- 
acters, with one of the best productions of his pen, cannot 
faU to be useful. There is, pei'haps, no modei'n Enghsh 
writer whose style is so pleasing and attractive, so vigor- 
ous and racy ; so calculated to arouse interest and create 
a desire to learn and get on in the world, as that of 
WiiiLiAM CoBBETT. As a writer, as a master of pure, cor- 
rect, vigorous, idiomatic Saxon English, he has never been 
surpassed ; and as an instructor of the language which he 
himself used so thoroughly well, he is unquestionably 
superior to any other writer who ever attempted to teach 
it. Let any intelligent American read his little English 
Grammar, and he will be compelled to admit that it is 
superior to anything of the kind ever produced; or let 
him read his Advice to Young Men, and he will as surely 
allow that in attractiveness of style, in clearness and force 
of expression, correctness and simplicity of language, no 
other work of the kind can at all compare with it. 



iv Preface. 

Mr. Eicliard Grant White, in speaking of the language 
of British authors, rightly places Cobbett among authors 
of the very highest class : " Macaulay, Thackeray, Helps, 
George Eliot, Johnson, Burke, Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, 
and Cobbett." Nor is he at all unworthy of such noble 
company; for I hardly know which of them surpasses 
him in eifective use of our noble Anglo-Saxon speech. 
The Saturday Hemeio speaks of him as possessing "im- 
mense vigor, resource, energy, and courage, joined to a 
force of understanding, a degree of logical power, and, 
above all, a force of expression, which have rarely been 
equalled." South ey declared that there never was a better 
or more forcible English writer than William Cobbett; 
and it was, I think, the same writer who declared that if 
a foreigner should ask him for a specimen of pure Eng- 
lish, he would select a passage, not from a work of one 
of the Oxford or Cambridge-bred scholars, but from one 
of those of the peasant-born and self-taught William 
Cobbett. 

As to his Grammar, it has enabled thousands who have 
failed to make head or tail of any other grammar to mas- 
ter the Enghsh language, and to speak and write it cor- 
rectly. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer speaks of it as " the only 
amusing grammar in the world ;" Hazlitt says it is " inter- 
esting as a story-book ;" and Mr. Richard Grant White 
declares that he "knows it well, and has read it with 
great admiration." When it first appeared in England, 
ten thousand copies were sold in the first month, and it 
has had a steady sale in that country ever since. In 
Germany it has been considered worthy of an honor 
which has never, I believe, been conferred on any other 
English grammar; namely, it is printed in the original, 
with notes in the German language, for the use of Ger- 
man students. 

The language of the ordinary English grammar-book is 
incomprehensible to boys and girls ; its words are unfa- 



Preface, v 

miliar and unintelligible to them; in fact, the whole 
vocabulary of grammar is a dead language to them. Now 
Cobbett's little work has the breath of life in it ; it is in 
LIVING, EVEKY-DAY ENGLISH; the verj words of it are alive, 
running over with life ; it talks to its readers, allures and 
draws them on, and makes learning pleasant to them. 
Read Cobbett to a class of boys and girls, and you will 
see their ej^es sparkle, theu* lips break in smiles, and their 
whole faces indicate pleased interest and surprise. Turn, 
now, and read Brown, Green, or Whitney to them. What 
a change ! Theii* faces instantly assume an expression of 
listlessness and indifference ; theh* jaws fall and theu* eyes 
grow dull; weariness takes possession of them, and if 
there is any movement at all among them, it is one 
expressive of impatience or annoyance. And no wonder ; 
for such a change is passing from life to death. The 
grammars of these men are nothing but words, words, 
words ; names, names, names ; rules, rules, rules ; Latin 
before and Latin behind; prefixes, suffixes, adjuncts; 
subordinate and co-ordinate elements; causative, copula- 
tive, adversative, alternative connectives; genitive, ac- 
cusative, ablative, locative cases; appositive adjectives 
and adnominal genitives ; factitive predicates and dative 
objectives; — a perfect whirlwind of hard words and 
phrases. And then they are all cut up into little bits ; 
so many dry, hard, knotty little chips ; sapless and savor- 
less, broad-faced, narrow-faced ; long, short ; thick, thin ; 
all tacked on one to another. How different Cobbett's 
little work is to theirs ! He carries everything along in 
one lucid living whole, and there is a freshness, an Eng- 
lishness, a salt-sea-au'-iness about his work that is en- 
tu^ely lacking in theii'S. Even Mr. Whitney devotes page 
after page to nothing but giving names to forms and 
expressions which never can possibly be misused; and 
the scholar who, with incredible pains and toil, gropes 
his way through his book, finds at last that he has learned 



vi Preface. 

little more than a lot of names. Cobbett gives just that 
knowledge which is necessary to enable one to write and 
SPEAK correctly, and all the rest he leaves to philologists 
and word-mongers. Instead of walking away up in the 
air on stilts, with unapproachable strides, he comes down 
and talks to his scholar in language that he can under- 
stand, in language that every plough-boy or news-boy can 
understand ; and yet, though suited to the comprehension 
of the least cultivated, his work is written in a style that 
the man of the finest culture cannot but admu'e. 

If, therefore, any text-book at all is to be introduced in 
the class, Cobbett's Grammar is the v.ery one; the only 
one; for with it, the dullest, most lifeless teacher must 
succeed in teaching, and the dullest, most lifeless scholar 
mtist succeed in learning the principles of English gram- 
mar ; or with even no teacher at all he will succeed, for it 
is itself the teacher ; teaching, truly enough, " without a 
master," or, at least, without any other master. I know 
this by actual experience ; for it was the first grammar 
that had any significance to me; the first that I could 
understand ; the first from which I learned anything ; — 
all the others were hateful things, which had no sort of 
significance to me. Cobbett's work is a mental awak- 
ener; a rouser of curiosity, interest, and ambition; and 
when these feelings are once aroused, everythmg is 
gained, teaching becomes easy, and success is certain. 
For what makes school a place of torture to children 
is the being compelled to listen to what they do not 
understand, to what they do not see the use of or the 
good of, and what they therefore do not care to listen to. 

This little grammar is the vei-y book, too, for those who 
are trying to teach themselves; those who are working 
away at mental improvement by self-help ; for those who 
have none but Providence and themselves to help them ; 
the very work for " soldiers, sailors, apprentices, plough- 
boys, clerks," mechanics; for all those who are striving 



Preface. vii 

to learn for themselves how to speak and write good, 
plain, correct English. It is the very book for those am- 
bitious and earnest young teachers who wish to learn the 
best way of communicating knowledge to youthful minds. 
When Charles James Fox heard any one speak in high 
terms of any recently-delivered speech, he was wont to 
ask, " Does it read well V and if the answer were in the 
affirmative, he would say, " It is a bad speech ;" conclud- 
ing that it was too formal and elaborate to be talk-like 
and natvn-al. If any one should tell me of a good lesson 
which he had listened to, the first thing I should ask 
would be: Did it excite interest ? was the attention of 
the scholars aroused"? did they like it? If the answer 
to these questions were in the negative, then I should 
say the lesson was a bad one, no matter how logical, 
well arranged, compact, or learned it might otherwise be : 
for the first requisite in teaching is to arouse interest ; 
whence follows a( Mention ; whence the acquisition of 
knowledge; whence reflection; whence culture. Hence 
the great advantage of Cobbett's manner of teaching : he 
arouses attention; awakens interest; makes the subject 
attractive; and kindles a desire to learn. He was the 
first to write on the subject in a way that plain people 
could understand; and I think he still continues un- 
rivalled as a teacher of the art of writing well. 

The aim of this work is to show what Cobbett was as 
a MAN and a wkitee. It is a study in language as well 
as in life. It is intended especially for every yoiing man 
who is striving to educate himself and to get on in the 
woKLD ; for every young teacher aiming at advancement in 
his profession, and for every one who is preparing himself 
to be a teacher or writer ; for all those who wish to see 
how a good writer has acquired his power of expression, 
and how he teaches others to acquire this power. Here 
is the story of a poor plough-boy working his way up in 
the world by his own unaided exertions, from the lowest 



Yiii Preface. 

round of the ladder to almost the highest ; from a poor 
lawyer's drudge and copyist to be one of the first writers 
of the age ; and here is one of the best works of his genius, 
composed when he had attained the fvdl maturity of his 
powers. 

The most frequently-quoted biography of Cobbett is 
that by the Eev. John Selby Watson.* This work, to 
which I here acknowledge my indebtedness for many 
facts in the life of Cobbett, is well written, complete, and 
apparently impartial ; but the impartiality is only appar- 
ent — and there is no surer way of destroying a man's 
character than by apparent impartiality in the doing of it 
— for its spirit is strongly hostile to Cobbett. Never was 
there a more skillfully arranged plan of attack; never 
was there such well-disguised hostility under the cloak of 
impartiality; never did cunning savage or murderous 
assassin ply his weapon with more deadly effect than 
Mr. Watson has plied his pen in destroying the character 
of William Cobbett. The way is prepared by the account 
of the life of a notoriously bad man. Cobbett is linked 
with Wilkes ; and his character is painted in such dark 
and doubtful colors, that we finally feel as little respect 
for the one as for the other. Mr. Watson belongs to the 
Established Church, to Oxford, and to the Conservative 
Party, at all of which Cobbett flung the most vigorous 
and telling shafts. Mr. Watson's sympathies are almost 
always with those whom Cobbett opposed or attacked; 
and he subjects his acts and motives to such a suspici- 
ous scrutiny, looks with such constant distrust on almost 
every thing Cobbett tells or says of himself, and puts 
his actions in such a repellent, discreditable light, that 
the impression one finally gets of him is, that he was a 
man with whom one wishes to have nothing further to 

* Biographies of John Wilkes and William Cobbett. Black- 
wood. Edinburgh, 1870, 



jPrefacd. is 



/ 



do, whose conduct was hardly ever praiseworthy, and 
from whose writings very Httle profit is to be derived. 
Being deeply convinced of the injustice of the picture 
thus drawn by Mr. Watson, I have endeavored to disprove 
a number of his accusations and insinuations, and to 
give an unprejudiced and fair view of the man and his 
writings. 

Mr. Edward Smith's Biography of Cobbett* — which I 
had not discovered until I had finished mine — is a very 
good one and very full. Mr. Smith's work is an endeavor 
to show what Cobbett was as a man, while mine is an 
attempt to show what he was as a wkiteb as well as a man. 
Though the best account of him that I have seen, Mr. 
Smith's work is, I think, faulty in one respect: it is the 
opposite of Mr. Watson's, being about as uniformly lauda- 
tory of his subject as Watson's is condemnatory. Mr. 
Smith strives as hard to make Cobbett out a perfect man, 
as Mr. Watson (whom he never once mentions through his 
whole two volumes) strives to make him out a worthless 
one. While Mr. Watson takes pains to bring out promi- 
nently all the doubtful passages of his life, and says little 
of the noble ones, Mr. Smith passes over very lightly, or 
mentions not at all, the doubtful passages, and makes the 
most of the noble ones. Besides, many things which this 
writer regards from an English point of view present a 
very different appearance when regarded from an Ameri- 
can point of view. The only important things that I 
have taken from his work are an extract from Mr. Wind- 
ham's diary, confirming Cobbett's presence at the Pitt 
dinner ; and a list of Cobbett's works, which I have placed 
at the end of the life. 

I am also indebted to the " Historical Characters " of 
Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer (now Lord Dalling) for one or 
two important facts. But the main sources of my informa- 

* William Cobbett: a Biograplij': 2 volumes. London: Samp- 
son, Low & Co., 1878. 



X Preface. 

tion are in tlie writings of Cobbett himself; writings 
wliich, it is well known, are remarkably autobiographical 
in their nature. 

Cobbett, whom the London Times well termed "the 
last of the Saxons," and the Saturday Review "the most 
English of Englishmen," was a truly great man, notwith- 
standing his many faults, and notwithstanding all that 
his enemies have said of him. For me, he has peculiar 
claims; for he was one of the heroes of my boyhood — 
a man from whose writings I received more instruction in 
my youth than from those of any other ; and it has been 
inexpressibly painful to me to see him covered with oblo- 
quy, accused of bribe-taking, forgery, falsehood, dishon- 
esty, demagoguery, hypocrisy and what not ; nearly all of 
which accusations without any other foimdation than 
mere assumption. Cobbett was not a perfect man — who 
is ? — but he had many sterling virtues well worthy of imi- 
tation; and the knowledge of both his virtues and his 
failings may be found, especially by young people, profit- 
able for instruction, for precept, and for example. 

HoBOKEN Academy, 

HoBOKEN, N. J., May 9th, 1883. 



Contents of the Life and Language. 



PAET I. 



COBBETT S CAREER IN YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD. FEOM HIS 

BIRTH, 1762, TILL HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND, 1800. 

Chapter Page 

I. — The occupations of an English farmei-'s boy. 1 

II. — From holding the plough to driving a quill. 7 

III. — Life in the British army 12 

IV. — Conduct in love and courtship 19 

V. — The Court-martial 28 

VI. — Life as a teacher and author. — Becomes the 

champion of George III 35 

VII. — The political parties in the United States. — 

Cobbett sides with Washington's party . . 41 

Vni.— In the thick of the fight 44 

IX. — How he defied the Democrats 47 

X. — The Court-martial again. — An ill-founded 

accusation 49 

XI. — The meeting of Cobbett and Talleyrand. . . 54 

XII. — Editorial warfare. — A mild correspondent. . 56 

XTTI. — Legal troubles. — Return to England 60 

PART n. 

FROM COBBETt's RETURN TO ENGLAND TILL HIS RELEASE FROM 
NEWGATE. 

I. — Why Cobbett acted as he did in America. — 

Reception by the Hon. William Windham. 64 

II. — The Pitt dinner-party 6G 



xil Contents of the Life. 

Chapter Page 

III. — How tlie scales were taken from his eyes . . 75 
rV. — " Porcupine " revived. — The Hawkesbury 

and Addington letters 81 

V. — The Register. — How Napoleon should be 

received 86 

VI. — Oakes Ames's predecessors. — Study of polit- 
ical economy 95 

VII. — The national debt. — Pitt's wonderful scheme 

to get rid of it 96 

VIII.— The " Juverna " letters 99 

IX. — Pitt and his policy 103 

X. — Happy years. — Miss Mitford's pleasing de- 
scription of Cobbett's home 107 

XI.— Cobbett and Doctor Mitford 112 

XII. — Royal beggars. — Trial of the Duke of York. 115 

XIII. — The catastrophe. — Trial and imprisonment. 122 
XIV. — Cobbett's reply to the Attorney-General's 

accusation 127 

XV. — England after the French Revolution 131 

XVI. — How to live in a prison 137 

PART III. 

FKOM cobbett's EELEASE FROM NEWGATE, 1812, TILL HIS 
DEATH, 1835. 

I. — His return to Botley 145 

II. — A false step and its consequences 147 

III. — Confession the only salvation. — The clergy- 
man and the statesman 153 

IV. — The unhappy year 1817 — Silence, a dun- 
geon, or exile 156 

V. — Cobbett's taking leave of his countrymen . . 159 

VI. — Mr. Watson's charge. — Sir Francis Burdett 

and his loan 163 



Contents of the Life. xiii 

Chapter Page 

VII. — Cobbett's second residence in America. — 
His changed sentiments regarding the 

United States 169 

Vm. — Cobbett's great financial mistake 173 

IX. — "A new way to pay old debts " 177 

X. — Cobbett's resurrection of Paine. — Infidels 
and beUevers. — What Paiae did for the 

United States 183 

XI. — At them again. — Down, but not dispirited. 191 
XII. — Stands for Coventry. — Defence of Queen 

Caroline 194 

XIII. — Castlereagh, Cobbett, and Watson 198 

XIV.— The Prestonians' ovation 200 

XV. — An unparalleled scene 203 

XVI. — Another prosecution. — ^Victory at last! — 
Parallel between England after the Na- 
poleonic wars and the United States after 

the Civil War 205 

XVII. — What his contemporaries said of him. — Cob- 
bett and Lord Jeffrey 208 

XVin.— Cobbett in Parhament 212 

XIX.— Ilkiess and death , 216 



PART IV. 

COBBETT AS A WKITEK. 

I. — How he taught grammar 219 

II.— The charm of Cobbett's style . . . . , 223 

III. — Cobbett compared with other political 

writers 225 

IV. — How he handled financial questions 227 

V. — Spoken versus written language 230 

VI. — How he handled the "big wigs." — Burke 

and Adam Smith ; Pitt, Fox, and Paine . . 233 



xiv Contents of the Life. 

Chapter Page 

Vn. — Cobbett's wit and humor. — The devil in an 

English paradise 239 

Vm. — How Cobbett could praise. — Interview with 
a chimney-sweep. — Canning's "instinctive 

patriotism " 242 

IX. — ^Analysis of a prince's letter 247 

X. — Cobbett's defence of the laboring classes . . 250 
XI. — His famous "History of the Reformation." 253 
XII. — The Sand-hill as an educator. — A pretty 

family picture 260 

XIII. — Self-esteem. — Cobbett's opinion of himself. 263 
XIV. — His faculty of nicknaming. — Peculiarities 

and eccentricities. — Conclusion 268 

BibHographical list of Cobbett's publications .... 273 
Index to Life 281 



Life and Language 

OP 

WILLIAM COBBETT. 



FAR.T I. 

Cobbett's Caeeer in Youth and Eakly Manhood. — From 
HIS Birth, 1762, till his Return to England, 1800. 

CHAPTER I. 

the occupations of an ENGLISH FARMER's BOY. 

In the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, the striking 
fact is observable, that the men who have caused great 
changes in society, who have overthrown governments 
and creeds and created a new order of things, have nearly 
all sprung from the common people, from the honest toil- 
ing class who produce the wealth and fight the battles of 
a country. This may be true of some other races as well 
as of the Anglo-Saxon ; but it is conspicuous in this race. 
Among other races the princely and the noble class play 
the chief role, and the people are the ciphers with which 
they work out theii' problems. Buckle, the historian, 
maintains, indeed, that no reformer is ever successful who 
is not sprung from, or put forward by, the people ; for he 
never can be successful, unless the people are, like him, 
desirous of refoi'ms, ripe for reforms ; and where this is 
the case, the reformer becomes simply the representative, 
1 



2 Life of William CohhetL 

tlie mouthpiece of tlie people, for whom he pleads and 
plans, the exponent of their thought, their wishes, their 
aspirations. 

Leading men never, in fact, bring the people along with 
and up to them, but they, the leaders, are pushed on or 
carried forward by the undercurrent of feeling in the 
hearts of the people, and they simj)ly realize what the 
people have long desired and striven for. 

In literature, as in politics, it is the same story : the 
great names are those of men of undistinguished ances- 
try, who have worked their way up to fame and influence 
in spite of every obstacle. And the man whose career I 
am about to narrate to you, although he is, perhaps, less 
widely known than Swift or Burns, Lincoln or Garfield, 
is scarcely less remarkable as a child of the people ; a 
man who, rising from the ranks, became pre-eminently a 
representative man, a reformer, an instructor of the peo- 
ple, a master of the pen ; who introduced a new style of 
writing, a new manner of teaching, new ideas in political 
economy, and promoted a new and better mode of parlia- 
mentary representation ; a man who, notwithstanding 
grave errors and great faults, did more to educate the 
people politically, socially, and literarily, than perhaps any 
other man of his time. In short, William Cobbett was 
one of those powerful men who, with a sound mind in a 
sound body, with strong common sense and a determined 
wUl, with keen perceptive and analytic faculties, had the 
gift of expressing his thoughts forcibly and effectively, 
and the coui'age to stand by them, against every kind of 
opposition, when he did express them. 

In giving an account of the life of Mr. Cobbett, I shall 
let him tell his own story wherever I can ; and this for 
two reasons : first, because he is always particularly enter- 
taiuing when speaking of himself ; and, secondly, because 
I wish to display the whiter even more than the man. 

Indeed, in this case, the writer is the man ; for never 



The Occupation^ of an jEnglish Fafmer'^s Boy. 3 

did any man's individuality stand out more prominently 
in Ms writings than that of Cobbett in his. His heart 
throbs in every page he wi'ote, and every thing he did 
was done with his whole heart. He is famous for his 
amusing, nay fascinating egotism ; for his constant habit 
of giving scenes and experiences from his oym. life to 
illustrate or exemplify some truth he is inculcating ; in 
fact, there is hardly an important event in his life of which 
there is not an echo to be found somewhere in his numer- 
ous writings. 

William Cobbett was born in 1762 in Farnham, Eng- 
land, where his father cultivated a small farm. His youth, 
though without schooling and passed in constant toil, 
seems to have been a happy one ; for he loved the rui-al 
scenes amongst which his youthful days were passed, and 
always recalled them with pleasure. He tells us himself 
that, in all his wanderings, he was hardly ever without a 
garden of some sort, as he could not live without the 
sight of grass, and flowers, and trees. 

" "With respect to my ancestors," he says in his autobi- 
ography, which extends only to 1799, "I shall go no 
farther back than my grandfather, and for this plain 
reason, that I never heard talk of any prior to him. Hg 
was a day-laborer, and I have heard my father say, that 
he worked for one farmer from the day of his marriage 
to the day of his death, upwai'ds of forty years. He died 
before I was born, but I have often slept beneath the 
same roof that sheltered him, and where his widow dwelt 
for several years after his death ; it was a little thatched 
cottage, with a garden before the door. It had but two 
windows ; a damson-tree shaded one, and a clump of fil- 
berts the other. 

" Here I and my brothers went every Christmas and 
^Vhitsuntide, to spend a week or two, and torment the 
poor old woman with our noise and dilapidations. She 
used to give us milk and bread for breakfast, an apple- 



4 Life of William Cohhett 

pudding for dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for 
supper. Her fire was made of turf, cut from the neigh- 
boring heath, and her evening hght was a rush dipped in 
grease. 

"My father was, when I was born, a farmer. The 
reader will easily believe, from the poverty of his parents, 
that he had received no very brilliant education ; he was, 
however, learned for a man in his rank of life. When a 
little boy, he di'ove the plough for twopence a day ; and 
these his earnings were appropriated to the expenses of 
an evening-school. What a village schoolmaster could be 
expected to teach, he had learnt, and had, besides, con- 
siderably improved himself in several branches of the 
mathematics. He understood land-surveying well, and 
was often chosen to draw the plans of disputed territory ; 
in short, he had the reputation of possessing experience 
and understanding, which never fails, in England, to give 
a man in a country place some little weight with his 
neighbors. He was honest, industrious, and frugal; it 
was not, therefore, wonderful that he shouldbe situated 
on a good farm, and happy in a wife of his own rank, 
like him, beloved and respected. 

" So much for my ancestors, from whom, if I derive no 
honor, I derive no shame. A father like ours, it will be 
readily supposed, did not suffer us to eat the bread of 
idleness. I do not remember the time when I did not 
earn my hving. My first occupation was driving the small 
birds from the tiu-nip-field and the rooks from the peas. 
When I first trudged a-field, with my wooden bottle and 
my satchel slimg over my shoulder, I was hardly able to 
climb the gates and stiles ; and at the close of the day to 
reach home was a task of infinite difficulty. My next em- 
ployment was weeding' wheat, and leading a single horse 
at harrowing barley ; hoeing peas followed, and hence I 
arrived at the honor of joining the reapers in harvest, 
driving the team, and holding the plough. We were all of 



The Occupations of an English Far-mer's Soy. 5 

us strong and laborious, and my father used to boast tliat 
he had four boys, the eldest of whom was but fifteen years 
old, who did as much woi'k as any three men in the jparish 
of Farnliam." 

And in his " Advice to Yoiuig Men," he says : " When I 
was a very little boy, I remember in the barley-sowing 
season, I was going along by the side' of a field, near 
Waverly Abbey; the primroses and bluebells bespangled 
the banks on both sides of me ; a thousand linnets were 
singing in a spreading oak over my head; while the jing- 
ling of the traces and the whistling of the plough-boys 
saluted my ear from over the hedge ; and, as it were to 
snatch me from the enchantment, the hounds, at that 
instant, having started a hare in the hanger* on the other 
side of the field, came up scampering over it in full cry, 
taking me after them many a mile. I was not more than 
eight years old, but this particular scene has presented 
itself to my mind many times every year from that day to 
this. I always enjoy it over again, and I have resolved 
to give, if possible, the same enjoyment to my children." 

"At eleven years of age," he tells us in another work, 
" my employment was clipping of box-edgings and weed- 
ing beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Win- 
chester at the castle of Farnham. I had always been 
fond of beautiful gardens ; and a gardener, who had just 
come from the king's garden at Kew, gave me such a 
description of them as made me instantly resolve to work 
in those gardens. The next morning, without saying a 
word to any one, off I set, with no clothes except those 
upon my back, and with thirteen half-pence in my pocket. 
I found that I must go to Richmond, and- 1 accordingly 
went on from jDlace to place, inquiring my way thither. 
A long day — it was in June — brought me to Richmond 
in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and cheese, 

*Grerman Oehange, slope, declivity. 



6 Life of William Cobbett. 

and a pennyworth of small beer, which I had on. the road, 
and one half -penny that I had lost somehow or other, left 
threepence in my pocket. With this for my whole for- 
tune, I was trudging through Richmond in my blue 
smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees, 
when, staring about me, my eye fell upon a little book in 
a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was writ- 
ten, 'The Tale of a Tub, price 3d.' The title was so odd 
that my cm'iosity was excited. I had the threepence, but 
then I could not have any supper. In I went, and got 
the little book, which I was so impatient to read that I 
got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, 
where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of this 
I sat down to read. The book was so different from any- 
thing I had ever read before — it was something so new to 
my mind — that, though I could not understand some parts 
of it, it delighted me beyond description, and it produced 
what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. 
I read on until it was dark, without any thought of sup- 
per or bed. "When I could see no longer, I put my little 
book in my pocket, and tumbled down by the side of the 
stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awak- 
ened me in the morning, when off I started to Kew, read- 
ing my little book. The singularity of my dress, the sim- 
phcity of my manner, my lively and confident air, and 
doubtless his own compassion besides, induced the gar- 
(Jener — who was a Scotchman, I remember — to give me 
victuals, find me lodging, and set me to work ; and it was 
during the period that I was at Kew, that George IV. 
and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my 
dress, while I was sweeping the grass-plot round the foot 
of the pagoda. The gardener, seeing me fond of books, 
lent me some gardening books to read ; but these I could 
not relish after my 'Tale of a Tub,' which I carried about 
with me wherever I went ; and when I, at about twenty- 
four years old, lost it in a box that fell overboard in the 



From Holding the JPlough to Driving a Quill. 7 

Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me greater 
pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds." 
The prince who laughed at that little fellow in his odd 
dress little imagined that he would one day become the 
literary champion of his father's government in his lost 
dominions of America, and subsequently the most formi- 
dable assailant of his father's and of his own government 
or misgovernment at home — one whom his ministers 
would pursue with such relentless severity as to cause 
him to be condemned, for one single attack, to an im- 
prisonment of two years and a fine of a thousand pounds. 
Equally little did the prince imagine that this little fellow 
in the rustic suit would one day play an important role in 
a domestic drama in which he (the prince) was deeply 
concerned, and afterwards write a famous history of his 
scandalous regency and reign. 



CHAPTER II. 

FKOM HOLDING THE PLOUGH TO DKIVING A QUILL. 

The following passage will show that in independence 
of thought, the father was not inferior to the son : " My 
father used to take one of us every year to the great hop- 
fair at "Wey-Hill. The fau' was held at Old Michaelmas- 
tide, and the journey was, to us, a sort of reward for the 
labors of the summer. It happened to be my turn to go 
thither the very year that Long Island was taken by the 
British. A great company of hop merchants and farmers 
were just sitting down to supper as the post arrived, 
bringing in the ' Extraordinary Gazette,' which announced 
the victory. A hop factor from London took the paper, 
placed his chair upon the table, and began to read in an 
audible voice. He was opposed ; a dispute ensued ; and 
my father retired, taking me by the hand, to another 



8^ Life of William Cobhett. 

apartment, where we supped with, about a dozen others 
of the same sentiments. Here Washington's health, and 
success to the Americans, were repeatedly toasted; and 
this was the first time, as far as I can recollect, that I 
ever heard the General's name mentioned. Little did 1 
then dream that I should ever see the man, and still less 
that I should hear some of his countrymen reviling and 
execrating him. 

" My father was a partisan of the Americans : he used 
frequently to dispute on the subject with the gardener of 
a nobleman who lived near us. This was generally done 
with good humor, over a pot of our best ale ; yet the dis- 
putants sometimes grew warm, and the subject gave rise 
to language that could not fail to attract our attention. 
My father was worsted, without doubt, as he had for 
antagonist a shrewd and sensible old Scotchman, far his 
superior in political knowledge ; but he pleaded before a 
partial audience : we thought there was but one wise man 
in the world, and that one was our father. He who 
pleaded the cause of the Americans had an advantage, 
too, with young minds r he had only to represent the 
icing's troops as sent to cut the throats of a people 
who were ovon friends and kinsfolk, merely because they 
would not submit to oppression, and his Cause was 
gained." 

In the winter evenings, this good father instructed his 
boys in reading, writing and arithmetic. Grammar, Cob- 
bett tells us, his father did not understand himself ; but 
we shall see presently how young Cobbett supplied this 
deficiency. He followed the plough until his sixteenth 
year, when, being sent to visit a kinsman near Portsmouth, 
he got a view of the sea and of the fleet, and a strong de- 
sii'e to become a sailor took possession of him. He man- 
aged to get on board of one of the men-of-war, and pre- 
sented himself before the captain as a candidate for naval 
service. Fortunately the captain was a humane man, and 



From Holding the Plough to Driving a Quill. 9 

lie plainly represented to the young enthusiast the hard- 
ships of a naval life, and endeavored to dissuade him from 
his design. He was sent on shore ; but, not satisfied 
with the representations of the captain, he applied to the 
post admiral, who also refused his request. Then he 
returned to his home and to his duties on the farm ; but, 
like Kobert Burns after a sight of fashionable life in 
Edinbiu-gh, he had seen something more pleasing than 
rustic life ; and he was spoiled for a farmer. He had 
heard something of the victories of England's naval heroes, 
and the victories of husbandry seemed tame in com- 
parison. 

This incident, like his journey to Kew, displays, at an 
early age, that venturesome and self-confident spirit for 
which he was afterwards remai'kable ; and the opinion has 
been expressed that, had he entered the navy, he would 
probably have attained as much distinction in naval life 
as he subsequently attained in civil life, and that his 
career would have added another star to the already bril- 
liant constellation of England's naval heroes. 

In the following spring (1783), while on his way to a 
fau", he saw the London stage-coach rattling down a hill, 
coming toward him at a merry rate ; and before it had 
come up to him he had made up his mind to take passage 
by this coach for London. So up he got and away he 
sped for the great city. Luckily, on the coach he made 
the acquaintance of a merchant, who had had dealings 
with his father, and who from regard for the father took 
some interest in the son. This gentleman, after trying in 
vain to induce him to return home, endeavored to find 
him some employment in London, and soon succeeded in 
placing him with a lawyer in Lincoln's Tun. With this 
lawyer, Mr. Holland of Gray's Inn, young Cobbett passed 
nearly a year of the very hardest kind of life. In his 
office he learned, however, some things not to be learned 
on a farm, besides much more orthographical knowledge 
1* 



10 Life of Williani Cohhett. 

than most boys learu in a year's schooling. After rejDeated 
endeavors and many blunders and failures, he succeeded 
in becoming a very fair copyist ; and now he Avas obliged 
to di'ive a quill, in a dmgy room on the top floor, from 
five in the mornmg till eight at night, and sometimes all 
night long. In a letter to one of his brothers, written at 
this period,- he says : "I am in an earthly hell. If you 
feel that you have any roguery in you, and have a dis- 
position to exercise it to its full extent, put yourself at 
the top of a coach, as I did, and make the best of your 
way to London. I could point out to you many places 
where you can practice to perfection ; but stop nowhere : 
get into an attorney's office as soon as you can, and you 
will have plenty of scope for your abilities. "Sou may 
now and then have something to do with wit ; but it is 
only wi'iting, Sui-rey 'to wit,' or Middlesex 'to wit.' If 
you think that you have any tenderness of conscience 
about you, for God's sake leave it behind you : it is of no 
use at all in an attoi*ney's office ; and try as much as you 
can to obliterate from your mind all the fusty antiquated 
notions about the responsibility of an oath : it is a most 
easy and convenient method of getting over a difficulty or 
a mistake : but perjury is not the only du-ty place which 
attorneys wade through to obtain their unhallowed gains." 
And subsequently, in his autobiography, he says : " No 
part of my life has been totally unattended with pleasure 
except the eight or nine months I passed at Gray's Inn. 
The office — -for so the dungeon was called — where I wrote, 
was so dark on cloudy days, we were obliged to burn 
candles. I worked like a galley-slave from five in the 
morning till eight or nine at night, and sometimes all 
night long. How many quarrels have I assisted to foment 
and perpetuate between those poor innocent fellows, Jolin 
Doe and Richard Roe ! How many times (God forgive 
me !) have I set them to assault each other with guns, 
swords, staves, and pitchforks, and then brought them to 



From Holding the Plough to Driving a Quill. 11 

answer for their misdeeds before our Sovereign Lord the 
King seated in his Court of "Westminster ? When I think 
of the saids and soforths, and the counts of tautology 
that I scribbled over ; when I thint of those sheets of 
seventy-two words, and those lines two inches apart, my 
brain turns ! Gracious Heaven ! if I am doomed to be 
wretched, bury me beneath Iceland snows, and let me 
feed on blubber ; stretch me under the burning line, and 
deny me thy propitious dews ; nay, if it be thy will, suffo- 
cate me with the infected and pestilential air of a demo- 
cratic club-room, — but save me, save me from the desk of 
an attorney ! Mr. Holland was but little in the chambers 
himself. He always went out to dinner, while I was left 
to be provided for by the laundress, as he called her. 
Those gentlemen of the law, who have resided in the inns 
of Court in London, know very well what a laundi'ess 
means. Oiu's was, I believe, the oldest and ugliest of the 
official sisterhood. She had age and experience enough 
to be lady abbess of all the nuns in the convent of Irish- 
Town. It would be wronging the witch of Endor to 
compare her to this hag, who was the only creature that 
deigned to enter into conversation with me. All except 
the name, I was in prison, and the weird sister was my 
keeper. Our chambers were to me what the subterranean 
cavern was to Gil Bias ; the description of the Dame 
Leonarda exactly suited my laundress ; nor were the pro- 
fessions, or rather the practice, of our masters altogether 
dissimilar." 

One Sunday morning, while taking his Aveekly walk in 
one of the parks, to feast his eyes, as he says, with the 
sight of trees and grass and flowers, he saw on one of 
the gates a placard inviting all loyal young men who 
wished to gain honor and fame in his majesty's service to 
repair to a certain rendezvous and enhst in the marines. 
Tired of his quill-driving life and longing for a change, 
Cobbett determined to accept the royal invitation. On 



12 Life of William Cohbett. 

presenting himself, and accepting the shilhng to drink 
his majesty's health, he found he was enlisted in a marching 
regiment of foot instead of the marines. On stating his 
disajppointment to the Captain, who was an Irishman, the 
latter immediately exclaimed : " By Jasus ! you have made 
a lucky escape." , The worthy Captain no doubt meant to 
infer that in the marines he would soon have gone to the 
bottom of the sea, while the regiment in which Cobbett 
had enlisted was, as he said, " one of the oldest and bold- 
est in the whole army, and was at that time serving in 
that fine flourishing country. Nova Scotia." 



CHAPTEE III. 

LIFE IN THE BKITISH AEMY. 

Cobbett soon found promotion in the army. He spent 
his leisure hours in reading and study ; he subscribed to 
a circulatmg library and read nearly every book in it- 
novels, plays, history, poetry, all with equal avidity. 

One cannot help recollecting the fact that it was while 
Napoleon was a simple lieutenant at an obscure town in 
France that he laid in nearly all the knowledge he ever 
possessed ; having, like Cobbett, read and re-read a whole 
library through. 

Having thus acquired a stock of promiscuous knowledge, 
he set himself to master thoroughly one branch of practi- 
cally useful knowledge, the grammar of his native tongue ; 
and he thus describes the circumstances under which that 
study was pursued : " I learned grammar when I was a 
private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge 
of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to 
study in ; my knapsack was my book-case ; a bit of board, 
lying on my lap, was my writing table ; and the task did 
not demand anything like a year of my life. I had no 



I-jife VII the British Army. 13 

money to purchase candle or oil ; in winter-time it was 
rarely ttiat I could get any evening light but that of the 
fire, and only my ttirn even of that. To buy a pen or a 
sheet of paper, I was compelled to forego some portion of 
food, though in a state of half starvation ; I had no mo- 
ment of time that I could call my own ; and I had to read 
and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whist- 
ling, and brawling of at least half a score of the most 
thoughtless of men, and that too in the hours of then- 
freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farth- 
ing I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen or paper ! 
That farthing was, alas, a great sum to me. I was as tall 
as I am now ; I had great health and great exercise. The 
whole of the money, not expended for us at the market, 
was t'wopence a loeek for each man. I remember — and 
well I may — that, upon one occasion, I, after all absolutely 
necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift to have 
a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the pur- 
chase of a red-herring in the morning ; but, when I pulled 
off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly 
able to endure life, I found that I had lost my half-penny ! 
I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and 
cried like a child." 

Cobbett was encouraged in the study of grammar by 
the commandant of the garrison. Colonel Debbeig, who 
had found out that he wrote a fail- hand and engaged him 
to copy his correspondence. 

"I transcribed the famous correspondence," he says, 
" between Colonel Debbeig and the Duke of Richmond, 
which ended in the good and gallant old colonel being 
stripped of the reward bestowed on him for his long and 
meritorious services. Being totally ignorant of the rules 
of grammar, I necessarily made many mistakes in copy- 
ing, because no one can copy letter by letter, nor eyen 
word by word. The colonel saw my deficiency, and 
strongly recommended study. He enforced his advice 



14 Life of miUcw!. Cohhett. 

with a sort of injunction, and with a promise of reward in 
case of success. I procured me a Lowth's grammar, and 
apphed myself to the study of it with unceasing assiduity, 
and not without some profit ; for though it was consider- 
able time before I fully comprehended all that I read, 
still I read and studied with such um^emitted attention, 
that, at last, I could wi'ite without falling into any very 
gross errors. The pains I took cannot be described ; I 
wrote the whole grammar out two or thi'ee times ; I got 
it by heart ; I repeated it every morning and every even- 
ing ; and, when on guard, I imposed on myself the task 
of saying it all over once every time I was posted sentinel. 
To this exercise of my memory I ascribe the retentiveness 
of which I have since found it capable, and to the success 
with which it was attended, I ascribe the perseverence 
that has led to the acquirement of the little learning of 
which I am master. This study Avas, too, attended with 
another advantage : it kept me out of mischief. I was 
always sober and regular in my attendance ; and not be- 
ing a clumsy fellow, I met with none of those reproofs 
which disgust so many young men with the service." 

Conduct like this is bound to succeed ; in fact, this is 
the only conduct that does succeed; constant, patient, 
persevering application is always successful ; a'ad, there- 
fore, we are not at all surj)rised at the result. Wliile yet 
under twenty years of age, Cobbett was promoted from 
the rank of corporal to be sergeant-major, at one step, 
over the heads of thirty sergeants, all older than himself. 
This was marvelously rapid promotion for those days, and 
he attributes it to nothing but his industrious, studious, 
and attentive habits. " If I had to mount guard at ten,^'' 
he says, " I was ready at ni7ie ; never did any man or any 
thing wait one moment for me. Being, at an age under 
twenty years, raised from ,corporal to sergeant-major at 
once, over the heads of thirty sergeants, I naturally 
should have been an object of envy and hatred ; but this 



Life, in the Mritish Army. 15 

habit of early rising and of rigid adherence to the pre- 
cepts which I have given you, really subdued these pas- 
sions ; because every one felt that what I did, he had 
never done, and never could do. Before my promotion, 
a clerk was wanting to make out the morning report of 
the regiment. I rendered the clerk unnecessary; and, 
long before any other man was di'essed for the parade, 
my work for the morning was all done, and I myself was 
on the parade, walkmg, in fine weather, for an houi' per- 
haps. My custom was this : to get up, in summer, at 
daylight, and in winter at four* o'clock ; shave, dress, even 
to the putting of my sword-belt over my shoulder, and 
having my sword lymg on the table before me, ready to 
hang by my side. Then I ate a bit of cheese, or pork 
and bread. Then I prepai*ed my report, which was filled 
up as fast as the companies brought me in the materials. 
After this I had an hour or two to read before the time 
came for my duty out of doors, unless when the regiment 
or part of it went out to exercise in the morning. Wlien 
this was the case, and the matter was left to me, I always 
had it on the ground in such time as that the bayonets 
glistened in the rising sun ; a sight which gave me de- 
light, of which I often think, but which I should in vain 
endeavor to describe. If the officers were to go out, 
eight or ten o'clock was the hour ; sweating the men in 
the heat of the day, breaking in upon the time for cook- 
ing thek dinner, putting all things out of order, and all 
men out of hur^or. "When I was commander, the men 
had a long day of leisure before them : they could ram- 
ble into the town or into the woods ; go to get raspber- 
ries, to catch bhds, to catch fish, or to pursue any other 
recreation, and such of them as chose, and were qualified, 
to work at their trades. So that here, arising solely from 
the early habits of one very young man, were pleasant 
and happy days given to hundreds." 

It was while at Chatham that, through his love of fun 



16 Life of William Cobhett. 

and mischief, lie got into his first scrape : " When I had 
the honor to serve his majesty, I was with seven of my 
comrades quartered upon a most bitter vixen of a lady. 
One evening when we had invested her fireside pretty 
closely, she began to abuse us in a way that put me in 
mind of Fielding's Mrs. Tow-wouse, to whom she bore 
no weak resemblance. As it happened, I had an old torn 
copy of ' Joseph Andrews,' which I fetched down-stairs. 
I began with a loud voice to read the description of the 
termagant in the romance ; but before I had half done 
the landlady flew across the half-moon that we had formed 
round her fire, and fixing one claw in my hair, and the 
other in the book, began to pull and tear like a fury, 
swearing all the while that she would have me flogged 
for a libel. With some difficulty I disentangled myself 
from her clutches, and endeavored to smooth her down, 
by convincmg her that it was a printed book I was read- 
ing, — a book, too, that was wiitten probably before she 
was born, and that of course, it could not be her that I 
was reading about. ' You lie, you young dog ! ' says she ; 
' it was about me; it was about m,e; and about nobody 
else ! ' And she actually went and complained of me to 
the commanding officer, telling him that I sat in her 
presence reading a nasty, lying book, that abused her, and 
all the genteel women m the parish. The colonel sent for 
me, and having obtained an explanation of the business, 
gave me a piece of advice. . . . ' Very well, Cobbett,' 
says he, ' I am glad to find you are in no fault ; but you 
are a young soldier, Cobbett, and if you like feather beds 
better than straw, and strong beer better than small, and 
if you would rather have a smack from a landlady's lips 
than from her fist, let me advise you always to examine 
her features well before you read to her the description 
of Mrs. Tow-wouse.'" 

Cobbett's experience of the army was altogether so 
pleasant that he almost makes one feel like imitating his 



Life in the Uritish Army. 17 

example and turning' soldier : " There is no situation," lie 
says, " where merit is so sure to meet with reward as in 
a well-disciplined army. Those who command are obliged 
to reward it for their own ease and credit. ... As 
promotion began to dawn, I grew impatient to get to my 
regiment, where I expected soon to bask under the rays 
of royal favor. The happy day of departure at last came ; 
we set sail from Gravesend, and, after a short and pleasant 
passage, arrived at Halifax in Nova Scotia. When I 
first beheld the barren, not to say hideous, rocks at the 
entrance of the harbor, I began to fear that the master 
of the vessel had mistaken his way ; for I perceived nothing 
of that fertility that my good recruiting-captain had dwelt 
on with so much delight. 

" Nova Scotia had no other charm for me than that of 
novelty. Everything I saw was new: bogs, rocks, and 
stumps, mosquitoes and bull-frogs. Thousands of cap- 
tains and colonels without soldiers, and of squires with- 
out stockings or shoes. . . . "We stayed but a few 
weeks in Nova Scotia, being ordered to St. John's in the 
province of New Brunswick. Here, and at other places 
in the same province, we remained till the month of Sep- 
tember, 1791, when the regiment was relieved, and sent 
home." 

He remained in the army eight years, and when his 
regiment returned to England, he sought and obtained 
his discharge, and received the official thanks of the major 
and the colonel of the regiment, " in consideration of his 
good behavior and the services he had rendered the 
regiment." He then married — ^his bride was the daughter 
of a sergeant of artillery, and a thrifty and exemplary 
wife she made, her character being as firm as his own — 
and went over to St. Omer in France, where he spent six 
months — the happiest, he says, in his life — studying the 
language and hterature and observing the customs and 
character of the French people. 



18 Life of William Cobhett. 

The great central fact in Cobbett's life in the army- 
is this : he was never idle, always active, always steady, 
always studying and learning something, constantly striv- 
ing to get on ; and this very activity and ambition of his 
enabled him to overcome the many temptations to vice 
and di-unkenness by which he was sm-rounded. " "When I 
was in the army," he says, "I was often tempted to take 
up the cards ; but the words of my father came into my 
mind, and rescued me from the peril. . . . During 
this part of my life, I lived amongst, and was compelled 
to associate with the most beastly of drunkards, in a place 
where hquor was so cheap that even a soldier might get 
drunk every day ; yet I never, during the whole time, 
even tasted of that liquor : my father's, and especially my 
mother's precepts were always at hand to protect me." 
That was where he had the advantage of them all : he 
possessed two great vntues, sobriety and industry, and 
these alone, with common capacity, will enable any man 
to get on in the world. Nor can I help noticing that 
these references of Cobbett's to the words of his father, 
and especially of his mother, present an encouraging ex- 
ample of the salutariness and effectiveness of parental 
admonition. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

CONDUCT IN LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 

But before following him farther, I must here quote 
(from his Advice) two interesting passages in his Nova 
Scdtian life concerning his conduct in love and coui'tship. 
" When I first saw my wife, she was thirteen years old, 
and I was about a month of twenty-one. ... I sat 
in the room with her, for about an hour, in company with 
others, and I made up my mind that she was the very 



Conduct in Love and Courtship. 19 

girl for me. Tiiat I thought her beautiful is certain, for 
that I had always said should be an indispensable qualifi- 
cation ; but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that 
sobriety of conduct of which I have said so much, and 
which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It 
was now dead of winter, and, of course, the snow was 
several feet deep on the ground, and the weather piercmg 
cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's 
writing, to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill, 
at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three 
mornings after I had fii'st seen her, I had, by an invita- 
tion to breakfast with her, got up two young men to join 
me in my walk ; and our road lay by the house of her 
father and mother. It was hardly light ; but she was out 
on the snow, scrubbing out a washing-tub. ' That's the 
gui for me,' said I, when we had got out of her hearing. 
From the day that I had first spoken to her, I never had 
a thought of her ever being the wife of any other man, 
more than I had a thought of her being transformed into 
a chest of drawers ; and I formed my resolution at once, 
to maiTy her as soon as we could get permission, and to 
get out of the army as soon as I could. So that this 
matter was, at once, settled as firmly as if written in the 
book of fate. At the end of about six months, my regi- 
ment, and I along with it, were jremoved to Frederickton, 
a distance of a hundred miles, up the river St. John ; and, 
which was worse, the ax'tillery (to which her father be- 
longed) were expected to go off to England a year or two 
before our regiment. The artillery went, and she along 
with them ; and now it was that I acted the part becom- 
ing a real and sensible lover. I was aware that, when she 
got to that gay place, Woolwich, the house of her father 
and mother, necessarily visited by numerous persons not 
the most select, might become unpleasant to her. I did 
not like, besides, that she should continue to xoork hard. 
X had saved a hundred and fifty guineas, — the earnings of 



20 Life of William Oohhett. 

my early hours, in writing for the paymaster, the quarter- 
master, and others, — in addition to the savings of my own 
pay. I sent her all my money before she sailed ; and 
wrote to her to beg of her, if she found her home uncom- 
fortable, to hire a lodging with respectable peojDle ; and, 
at any rate, not to spare the money, by any means ; but 
to buy herself good clothes, and to live without hard 
work, until I arrived in England ; and I, in order to in- 
duce her to lay out the money, told her that I should get 
plenty more before I came home. 

'' As the malignity of the devil would have it, we were 
kept abroad two years longer than our time, Mr. Pitt 
(England not being so tame then as she is now) having 
knocked up a dust with Spain about Nootka Sound. Oh 
how I cursed Nootka Sound, and poor bawling Pitt, too, 
I am afaid ! At the end of foui- years, however, home I 
came ; landed at Portsmouth, and got my discharge from 
the army by the great kindness of poor Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, who was then the major of my regiment. I 
found my little ghl a servant of all toork (and hard work 
it was) at five pounds a year, in the house of a Captain 
Brisac ; and, without saying hardly a word about the mat- 
ter, she put into my hands the whole of the hundred and 
fifty guineas unbroken! Need I tell the reader what 
my feelings were"? Need I tell kind-hearted EngUsh 
parents this anecdote, and what effect it must have pro- 
duced on the minds of our children ? Admiration of her 
conduct, and self-gratulation on this indubitable proof of 
the soundness of my own judgment, were added to my 
love of her beautifrd person." 

While his intended bride was in England, he accident- 
ally made the acquaintance of a very interesting Nova 
Scotian family, away out in the wilds of New Brunswick ; 
and in this family was a young lady, the farmer's daugh- 
ter, into whose society he was frequently attracted, and 
who came very near banishing the other " dear charmer " 



Conduct in Love and Courtship. 21 

from his thoughts. But the whole story is so beautifully 
and interestingly told by himself, that I will not dare to 
mar it by recapitulation. It is written in Cobbett's best 
style, and is a fine specimen of what he can do in the way 
of narrative and descriptive composition. I will only re- 
mark, before giving the passage, that Cobbett's conduct 
on this occasion was not entirely blameless ; yet his error 
was such as any young man in his cii-cumstances might 
have fallen into ; he was imprudent, not heartless ; for, 
compared with Goethe's conduct toward the beautiful and 
accomplished Frederika, whose love he had won, whom 
he had deserted, and afterwards allowed to be slandered 
without uttering a word in her defense, it was perfectly 
harmless. 

" The Province of New Brunswick, in North America, in 
which I passed the years from the age of eighteen to that 
of twenty-six, consists, in general, of heaps of rocks, in the 
interstices of which grow the pine, the spruce, and vari- 
ous sorts of fir-trees; or, where the woods have been 
burned down, the bushes of the raspberry or those of the 
hucklebeiTy. The province is cut asunder lengthwise by 
a great river, called the St. John, which is about two hun- 
dred miles in length, and, at half-way from the mouth, 
full a mile wide. Into this main river run innumerable 
smaller rivers, there called ceeeks. On the sides of these 
creeks the land is, in places, clear of rocks ; it is, in these 
places, generally good and productive; the trees that 
grow here ai'e the bh'ch, the maple, and others of the 
deciduous class ; natural meadows here and there present 
themselves ; and some of these spots far surpass in rural 
beauty any other that my eyes ever beheld : the creeks 
abounding towards then- sources ui waterfalls of endless 
variety, as well in form as in magnitude, and always 
teeming with fish, while water-fowl enliven their sin-face, 
and while wild-pigeons, of the gayest plumage, flutter, in 
thousands upon thousands, amongst the branches of the 



22 Life of William Cohbett. 

beautiful trees, which sometimes, for miles together, form 
an arch over the creeks. 

"I, in one of my rambles in the woods, in which I took 
great delight, came to a spot at a very short distance 
from the source of one of these creeks. Here was-- every 
thing to delight the eye, and especially of one like me, who 
seem to have been born to love rtu-al life, the trees and 
plants of all soi-ts. Here were about two hundred acres 
of natural meadow, interspersed with patches of maple- 
trees in various forms and of various extent ; the creek 
(there about thirty miles from its point of joining the St. 
John) ran down the middle of the spot, which formed a 
sort of dish, the high and rocky hills rising all round it, 
except at the outlet of the creek, and these hills crowned 
with lofty pines ; in the hills were the sources of the creek, 
the waters of which came down in cascades, for any one 
of which many a nobleman in England would, if he could 
transfer it, give a good slice of his fertile estate ; and in 
the creek, at the foot of the cascades, there were, in the 
season, salmon, the finest in the world, and so abundant, 
and so easily taken, as to be used for manuring the land. 

"If Nature, in her very best humor, had made a spot 
for the express purpose of captivating me, she could not 
have exceeded the efforts which she had here made. But I 
found something here besides these rude works of natui'e ; 
I found something in the fashioning of which man had 
had something to do. I found a large and well-built log 
dwelling-house, standing (in the month of September) on 
the edge of a very good field of Indian corn, by the side 
of which there was a piece of buckwheat just then mowed. 
I found a homestead, and some very pretty cows. I found 
all the things by which an easy and happy farmer is sur- 
rounded ; and I found still something besides all these, 
something that was destined to give me a great deal of 
pleasure and also a great deal of pain, both in theu' ex- 
treme degree ; and both of which, in spite of the lapse of 



Conduct in Love and Courtship. 23 

forty yeai's, now make an attempt to rusli back into my 
heart. 

" Partly from misinformation, and partly from miscal- 
ctilation, I had lost my way ; and, quite alone, but armed 
with ftiy sword and a brace of pistols, to defend myself 
against the beai'S, I arrived at the log-house in the mid- 
dle of a moonlight night, the hoar frost covering the tree's, 
and the gi-ass. A stout and clamorous dog, kept off by 
the gleaming of my sword, waked the master of the house, 
who got up, received me with great hospitality, got me 
something to eat, and put me into a feather-bed, a thing 
that I had been a stranger to for some years. I, being 
very tii-ed, had tried to pass the night in the woods, be- 
tween the trunks of two large trees, which had fallen side 
by side, and within a yard of each other. I had made a 
nest for myself of dry fern, and had made a covering by 
laying boughs of spruce across the trimks <of the trees. 
But unable to sleep on account of the cold; becoming 
sick fr-om the great quantity of water that I had drunk 
during the heat of the day, and being, moreover, alarmed 
at the noise of the bears, and lest one of them should find 
me in a defenseless state, I had roused myself up, and had 
crept along as well as I could. So that no hero of eastern 
romance ever experienced a more enchantmg change. 

"I had got into the house of one of those Yankee 
Loyalists, who, at the close of the revolutionary war 
(which, until it had succeeded, was called a rebellion), had 
accepted of grants of land in the King's Province of New 
Brunswick ; and who, to the great honor of England, had 
been furnished with all the means of making new and 
comfortable settlements. I was suffered to sleep till break- 
fast time, when I found a table, the like of which I have 
since seen so many in the United States, loaded with good 
things. The master and mistress of the house, aged about 
fifty, were like what an English farmer and his wife were 
half-a-century ago. There were two sons, tall and stout, 



24 Life of William Cohhett. 

who appeared to have come in from work, and the young- 
est of whom was about my age, then twenty-three. But 
there was another member of the family, aged nineteen, 
who (dressed according to the neat and simple fashion of 
New England, whence she had come with her parents five 
or six years before) had her long light-brown hair twisted 
nicely up, and fastened on the top of her head, in which 
head were a pair of lively blue eyes, associated with fea- 
tures of which that softness and that sweetness, so char- 
acteristic of American girls, were the predominent ex- 
pressions, the whole being set off by a complexion indic- 
ative of glowing health, and forming, figure, movements, 
and all taken together, an assemblage of beauties, far sur- 
passing any that I had ever seen but once in my life. That 
once was, too, Pwo years ago'ne ; and, in such a case and 
at such an age, two years, two whole years, is a long, long 
while ! It was a space as long as the eleventh part of my 
then life. Here was the 2)'>^esent against the absent : here 
was the power of the eyes pitted against that of the mem- 
ory : here were all the senses up m arms to subdue the 
influence of the thoughts : here was vanity, here was pas- 
sion, here was the spot of all spots in the world, and here 
were also the life, and the manners and the habits, and 
the pm-suits that I delighted in : here was everything that 
imagination can conceive, united in a conspiracy against 
the poor little brunette in England! What, then, did I 
fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and roses'? 
Oh! by no means. I was, however, so enchanted with 
the place ; I so much enjoyed its tranquility, the shade of 
the maple trees, the business of the farm, the sports of 
the water and of the woods, that I stayed there to the last 
possible minute, promising, at my departure, to come 
again as often as I possibly could ; a promise which I most 
punctually fulfilled. 

"Winter is the great season for jaunting and dancing 
{coXledL frolicking) in America. In this Province the river 



Condyict in Love and Courtship. 25 

and the creeks were the only roads from settlement to 
settlement. In summer we travelled in canoes y in winter 
in sleighs on the ice or snow. During more than two 
yeai's I spent all the time I could with my Yankee friends : 
they were all fond of me : I talked to them about country 
affairs, my evident delight in which they took as a compli- 
ment to themselves : the father and mother treated me as 
one of then- children ; the sons as a brother ; and the 
daughter, who was as modest and as full of sensibility as 
she was beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less 
sanguine than I was would have given the tenderest inter- 
pretation ; which treatment I, especially in the last-men- 
tioned case, most cordially repaid. 

" It is when you meet in company with others of youi* 
OAvn age that you are, in love matters, put most frequently 
to the test, and exposed to detection. The next-door neigh- 
bor might, in that country, be ten miles off. We used to have 
a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at another. 
Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no 
secret can long be kept ; and very soon father, mother, 
brothers, and the whole neighborhood looked upon the 
thing as certain, not excepting herself, to whom I, how- 
ever, had never once even talked of marriage, and had 
never even told her that I loved her. But I had a thousand 
times done these by implication, taking into view the in- 
terpretation that she would natui'ally put upon my looks, 
appellations, and acts ; and it was of this that I had to 
accuse myself. Yet I was not a deceiver • for my affection 
for her was very great ; I spent no really pleasant hoin-s 
but with her ; I was uneasy if she showed the slightest 
regai-d for any other yoxmg man; I was unhapy if the 
smallest matter affected her health or sj)mts : I quitted 
her in dejection, and retiu-ned to her with eager delight: 
many a time when I could get leave but for a day, I pad- 
dled in a canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to 
pass that day with her. If this was not love, it was first 
2 



26 Life of William Cobhett 

cousin to it ; for as to any criminal intention, I no more 
thought of it, in her case, than if she had been my sister. 
Many times I jDut to myself the questions : ' What am I 
at? Is not this wrong? Why do I go?' But still I 
went. 

"Then, further in my excuse, my prior engagement, 
though carefully left unalluded to by both parties, was, in 
that thin population, and owing to the singular cu-cum- 
stances of it, and to the great talk that there always was 
about me, p)€.rfectly loell knoion to her and all her family. 
It was matter of so much notoriety and conversation in the 
Province, that Genekal Caeleton (brother of the late Lord 
Dorchester) who was the Governor when I was there, 
when he, about fifteen years afterwards, did me the hon- 
our, on his return to England, to come and see me at my 
house in Duke Street, Westminster, asked, before he went 
away, to see my vnfe, of whom he had heard so much before 
her marriage. So thatjhere was no deception on my part ; 
but still I ought not to have suffered even the most distant 
hope to be entertained by a person so innocent, so amiable, 
for whom I had so much affection, and to whose heart I 
had no right to give a single twinge. I .ought, from the 
very first, to have prevented the possibihty of her ever 
feeling pain on my account. I was you!iig, to be sure; 
but I was old enough to know what was my duty in this 
case, and I ought, dismissing my own feelings, to have 
had the resolution to perform it. 

" The last parting came ; and now came my just pun- 
ishment! The time was known to everybody, and was 
u-revocably fixed ; for I had to move with a regiment, and 
the embarkation of a regiment is an epoch in a thinly-set- 
tled province.. To describe this parting would be too 
painful even at this distant day, and with this frost of age 
upon my head. The kind and virtuous father came forty 
miles to see me, just as I was going on board in the river. 
His looks and words I have never forgotten. As the ves- 



The, (U)urt- Martial. 27 

sel descended, slie passed the mouth of that creek., which 
I had so often entered with dehght ; and though England, 
and all that England contained, were before me, I lost 
sight of this creek with an aching heart. 

"On what trifles tru-n the great events in the hfe of 
man ! If I had received a cool letter from my intended 
wife ; if I had only heard a rumor of anything from which 
fickleness in her might have been inferred ; if I had found 
in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if 
she had but let go any one of the hundi-ed strings by which 
she held my heart ; if any of these had occurred, never 
would the world have heard of me. Young as I was; 
able as I was as a soldier ; proud as I was of the admira- 
tion and commendations of which I was the object ; fond 
as I was, too, of the command, which, at so eai'ly an age, 
my rai'e conduct and gTeat natiu'al talents had given me ; 
sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were my pros- 
jDects; yet I had seen so much of the meannesses, the 
unjust pai'tialities, the insolent pomposity, the disgusting 
dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it ; I 
longed to exchange my fine laced coat for the Yankee 
farmer's homespun, to be where I should never behold 
the supple crouch of servihty, and never hear the hector- 
ing voice of authority again ; and, on the lonely banks of 
this branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of 
the question) everything congenial to my taste and dear 
to my heai't, I, unapplauded, unfeared, ujienvied and un- 
calumniated, should have lived and died." 



28 Life of William Cohhett. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE COUET-IIARTIAL. 

Cobbett's connection with the army, however, was not 
destined to end agreeably to all i^arties. On obtaining 
his discharge from the regiment, he made an accusation 
of dishonesty against four of its officers, and a day was 
fixed for trial by Covirt-martial. But before the day of 
trial arrived, Cobbett had set out for France, and thus 
failed to appear to make good his accusation. Failing, 
after diligent inquiry, to find any trace of him, the coin*t 
proceeded with the trial, which resulted in the. acquittal 
of the accused. 

As this is a very serious matter, of which much has 
been made by the enemies of Cobbett, I think it right to 
give his defense — of the very existence of which some 
writers about him seem to be unaware — in his own words ; 
merely premising that in 1809 his adversaries had pub- 
lished a pamphlet, giving an account of the Court-martial, 
which must have been written by somebody having access 
to the government archives, for it contained documents 
found only in those archives. Cobbett says the extracts 
from the letters are garbled and imperfect in several par- 
ticulars. This j)amphlet, which was published for the 
express purpose of injuring his character, and destroying 
his infiuence as an opposition writer, was distributed by 
tens of thousands over the county in which he resided, 
and spread abroad for gratuitous distribution. In a letter 
to the people of Hampshire concerning this pamphlet, he 
gives an account of his progress in the army and his hon- 
orable discharge, and then says : 

" Wliile I was a corporal, I was made clerk to the regi- 
ment. In a very short time, the whole of the business, in 
that way, fell into my hands ; and at the end of about a 



The Court- Martial. 29 

yepi*, neither adjutant, paymaster, or quaa'termaster could 
move an inch without my assistance. . . . As I ad- 
vanced in experience, I felt less and less respect for those 
whom I was compelled to obey. One suffers injustice 
from men of great endowment of mind with much less of 
heart-bui'ning than from men whom one cannot help de- 
sj)ising ; and if my officers had been men of manifest 
superiority of mind, I should perhaps not have so soon 
conceived the project of bringing them, or some of them 
at least, to shame and punishment for the divers flagrant 
breaches of the law committed by them, and for then- 
manifold, theii' endless Avrongs against the soldiers and 
against the public. 

" This project was conceived so early as the year 1787, 
when an affau' happened that first gave me a full insight 
into regimental justice. It was shortly this: that the 
quartermaster, who had the issuing of the men's provi- 
sions to them, kept about a fourth part of it to himself 
This, the old sergeants told me, had been the case for many 
years ; and they were quite astonished and teiTified at the 
idea of my complainmg of it. This I did, however, but 
the reception I met with convinced me that I must never 
make another complaint till I got safe to England, and 
safe out of the reach of that most curious of courts, a 
Court-martial. 

" From this thne forward, I began to coUect materials 
for an exposiu-e, upon my retru'n to England. I had 
ample opportunities for this, being the keeper of all the 
books, of every sort, in the regiment, and knowing the 
whole of its affairs better than any other man in it. But, 
the winter previous to our retru-n to England, I thought 
it necessary to make extracts fi'om the books, lest the 
books themselves should be destroyed. And here begins 
the history of the famous Coui't-martial. In order to be 
able to prove that these extracts were coiTect, it was neces- 
sary that I should have a witness as to then- being time 



30 L'if& of William Cohhett. 

copies. This was a very ticklish point. One foohsh step 
here would have sent me down to the ranks with a pair of 
bloody shoulders. Yet it was necessary to have the wit- 
ness. I hesitated many months. At one time I had 
given the thing up. I dreamt twenty times, I daresay, of 
my papers being discovered and of bemg tried and 
flogged half to death. At last, however, some fresh act 
of injustice towards us made me set all danger at defi- 
ance. I opened my project to a corporal, whose name 
was William Bestland, who wrote in the office under me, 
who was a very honest fellow, who was very much bound 
to me for my goodness to him, and who was, with the sole 
exception of myself, the only sober man in the whole reg- 
iment. • 

"To work we went, and during a long winter, while the 
rest were boozing and snoring, we gutted no small part of 
the regimental books, rolls, and other documents. Our 
way was this : to take a copy, sign it with oiu* names, and 
clap the regimental seal to it, so that we might be able to 
swear to it when produced in coui't. All these papers 
were put into a little box, which I myself had made for 
the purpose. When we came to Portsmouth, there was a 
talk of searching all the boxes, etc., which gave us great 
alarm ; and induced us to take out .all the papers, put 
them in a bag, and trust them to a custom-house officer 
who conveyed them on shore, to his own house, whence I 
removed them a few days after. 

" Thus prepared, I went to London, and on the 14th of 
January, 1792, I wrote to the then Secretary-at-War, Sir 
George Yonge, stating my situation, my business with 
him, and my intentions ; enclosing him a letter of peti- 
tion from myself to the King, stating the substance of all 
the complaints I had to make; and which letter I re- 
quested Sir George Yonge to lay before the King. 

" I waited from the 14th to the 24th of January with- 
out receiving any answer at all, and then all I heard was 



'The Co art- Martial. 31 

that he Avishecl to see me at the War-office. At the War- 
office I was sho\vxi into an antechamber amongst numer- 
ous anxious-looking men, who, every time the door 
which led to the great man was opened, turned their eyes 
that Avay -wdth a motion as regular and as uniform as if 
they had been drilled to it. These people eyed me from 
head to foot, and I never shall forget their look when 
they saw that I Avas admitted into paradise without being 
detained a single moment in purgatory. 

" Sii" George Yonge heard my story; and that was all 
he appai'ently wanted of me. I was to hear from him 
again in a day or tioo; and, after waiting iov fifteen days, 
without hearing fi'om him, or any one else, upon the sub- 
ject, I wrote to him again, reminding him that I had from 
the lirst told him that I had no other business in London; 
that my stock of money was necessarily small ; and that 
to detain me in London iras to ruin me. Indeed, I had in 
the whole world but about 200 guineas, which was a great 
deal for a person in my situation to have saved. Every 
Aveek in London, especially as, by way of ej^isode, I had 
now married, took at least a couple of guineas from my 
stock. I therefore began to be very impatient, and indeed 
to be very suspicious that inilitary justice in England 
was pretty nearly akin to military justice in Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick. 

" The letter I now -wrote was dated on the 10th of 
Febiniary, to which I got an answer on the 15th, though 
the answer might have been written in a moment. I was, 
in this answer, informed that it Avas the intention to try 
the accused on only part of the charges which I had pre- 
feiTed ; and from a new-modeled list of charges sent me 
by the Judge-Advocate on the 23d of February, it ap- 
peared that, even of those charges that Avere suffered to 
remain, the parts the most material were omitted. But 
this was not all. I had all along insisted that, unless the 
Coui't-mai'tial was held in London, I could not think of 



82 Life of Willicmi Cobbett. 

appearing at it ; because, if held in a garrisoned plac^/ 
like Portsmouth, the thing must be a mere mockery. In 
spite of this, however, the Judge-Advocate's letter of the 
23d February informed me that the court was to be held 
in Portsmouth or Chelsea. I remonstrated against this, 
and demanded that my remonstrance should be laid before 
the King, which, on the 29th, the Judge- Advocate prom- 
ised should be done by himself ; but on the 5th of March 
the Judge-Advocate informed me that he had laid my 
remonstrance before — lohom, think you ? Not the King, 
but the accused parties; who, of coui'se, thought the 
court ought to assemble at Portsmouth or Chelsea, and 
doubtless for the very reasons that led me to object to its 
being held there. 

" Plainly seeing what was going forward, I, on the 7tli 
of March, made, ^Vi a letter to Mr. Pitt, a representation 
of the whole case, giving him a history of the obstacles I 
had met with. ... This letter (which, by the by, 
the public robbers [who published the pamphlet] have 
not published) had the effect of changing the i:)lace of the 
Court-martial, which was now to be held in London ; but, 
as to my other ground of complaint, the leaving of the 
regimental books unsecured, it had no effect at all ; and, 
it will be recollected, that without those books, there could 
be, as to most of the weighty charges, no proof produced 
without bringmg forward Corporal Bestland, and the 
danger of doing that will be presently seen." 

On the 22d of January he wrote to Sir George Yonge, 
desiring him to have the regimental books secured, that 
is, taken out of the reach of the parties accused. Two 
days after this. Sir George assui-ed him in writing that he 
had taken care to have these documents secui'ed. Yet, 
notwithstandmg further assurances to the same effect, it 
now appeared from the pamphlet that " the first time any 
order for securing the books was given was on the I'&th 
of March.'''' " There is quite enough in this fact alone," 



The Court-Martial. 33 

continues Cobbett, " to show the pubhc what sort of a 
chance I stood of obtaining justice." 

"Without these written documents," he continues, 
" nothing of importance could be proved, unless the non- 
commissioned officers and men of the regiment should 
hapj)en to get the better of then* di'ead of the lash ; and 
even then they could speak only from memory. All, 
therefore, depended upon those written documents as to 
the principal charges. Therefore, as the Coui-t-martial 
was to assemble on the 24th of March, I went down to 
Portsmouth on the 20th, in order to know for certain 
what had become of the books ; and I found, as I indeed 
suspected was the case, that they had never been secured 
at all; that they had been left in the hands of the 
accused from the 14th of January to the very hour- of 
trial ; and that, in short, my request as to this point, the 
positive condition as to this most important matter, had 
been totally disregarded. 

"There remained, then, nothing to rest upon with 
safety, but our extracts, confirmed by the evidence of 
Bestland, the corporal, who had signed them along with 
me; and this I had solemnly engaged with him not to 
have recourse to, unless he was first out of the army; 
that is to say, out of the reach of the vindictive and 
bloody lash. He was a very little fellow, not more than 
five feet high ; and had been set down to be discharg'ed 
when he went to England ; but there was a suspicion of 
his connection with me, and therefore they resolved to 
keep him. It would ha-\;e been cruel, and even perfidious, 
to have brought him forward under such cu'cumstances ; 
and, as there was no chance of domg anything without 
him, I resolved not to api:)ear at the Court-martial, unless 
the discharge of Bestland was first granted. Accord- 
ingly, on the 20th of March, I wrote from Eratton, a vil- 
lage neai" Portsmouth, to the Judge-Advocate, stating 
over again all the obstacles that had been thiown iu my 
2* 



34 Life of William Oobhett. 

way, complaining particularly that the books and docu- 
ments had been left in possession of the accused, contrary 
to my ui'gent request, and to the positive assurances of 
the Secretary-at-War, and concluding by demanding the 
discharge of a man, whom I should name, as the only 
condition upon which I would attend the Court-martial. 
I requested him to send me an answer by the next day, 
at night, at my former lodging ; and told him, that, unless 
such answer was received, he and those to whom my re- 
peated apiDlications had been made might do what they 
pleased with then- Court-martial; for that I confidently 
trusted that a few days wordd put me beyond the scope 
of then' power. 

" No answer came, and as I had learned, in the mean- 
while, that there was a design to prosecute me for sedi- 
tion, that was an additional motive to be quick in my 
movements. As I was gomg down to Portsmouth, I met 
several of the sergeants coming up, together with the 
music-master; and as they had none of them been in 
America, I wondered what they could be going to London 
for ; but, upon my return, I was told by a Captain Lane, 
who had been in the regiment, that they had been brought 
up to swear, that, at an entertainment given to them by 
me before my departure from the regiment, I had drunk, 
'the destruction of the House of Brunswick.'' This was 
false, but I knew that that was no reason why it should 
not be swo7-n by such persons and in such a case. I had 
talked pretty freely upon the occasion alluded to ; but I 
had neither said nor thought anything against the King, 
and as to the House of Brunswick, I hardly knew what it 
meant. My head was filled with the corruptions and the 
baseness in the army. I knew nothing at all about poli- 
tics. Nor would any threat of this sort have induced me 
to get out of the way for a moment ; though it certainly 
would, if I had known my danger ; for glorious ' Jacobin- 
ical' times were just then beginning. Of this, however, 



lAfe as a Teacher and Author. 35 

I knew nothing at all. I did not know what the Suspen- 
sion of the Habeas Corpus Act meant. 

" When you have a mind to do a thing, every trifle is 
an additional motive. Lane, who had enlisted me, and 
Avho had always shown great kindness towai'd me, told 
me they would send me to Botany Bay ; and I now verily 
believe that if I had remained, I should have furnished a 
pretty good examj^le to those who wished to correct mili- 
tary abuses. I did not, however, leave England from this 
motive. I could not obtain a chance of success without 
exposing the back of my poor, faithful friend, Bestland, 
which, even if I had not pledged myself not to do, I 
would not have done. It was useless to appear unless I 
could have tolerable faii'-play ; and, besides, it seemed 
better to leave the whole set to do as they pleased, than 
to be made a mortified witness of what it was quite evi- 
dent they had resolved to do." 

Leaving the reader to form his own opinion on this de- 
fense, I shall reserve what I have to say on the matter 
until I have got a little farther on in this history, and 
have recounted some other cu"cumstances necessary to be 
considered in connection with this matter. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

LIFE AS A TEACHER AND AUTHOE. BECOMES THE CHAMPION OF 

GEORGE III. 

The progress of the great French Eevolution (1792) 
was now beginning to create alarm, and Cobbett having 
read the Abbe Raynal's fascinating book on the American 
colonies, resolved to emigrate to America. Before doing 
so, however, he determined to visit Paris, and had reached 
Abbeville on his way thither, when, hearing of the de- 
thi'onement of the King and the massacre of his guards. 



36 JAfe of IVilUani Cohhett. 

he immediately changed his route and traveled towards 
Havre-de-Grace, which he reached after much difficulty 
and many interruptions. " He travelled in a caleche," say 
his sons, "and as the people were at every town looking 
out for ' aristocrats,' they stopped him so frequently, and 
the police examined all his things so scrupulously, making 
him read all his papers in French to them, that he did 
not reach Havre till the 16th of August." He had left 
Abbeville on the 11th. He probably on this occasion 
owed the preservation of his liberty, perhaps of his life, 
to his knowledge of the French tongue. 

Arriving in Philadelphia in October, 1792, he soon left 
that city for Wilmington, on the Delaware, twenty-eight 
miles from Philadelphia, where he found a number of 
French emigrants ; and having now a good knowledge of 
French as well as of his native tongue, he soon found 
profitable employment as a teacher of English to French- 
men. He returned, however, in a short time to Philadel- 
phia, where, according to the testimony of his sons, he 
earned between four and five hundred pounds a year in 
teaching English to Frenchmen — a sum which, I imagine, 
few teachers at the present day earn at the same or a 
similar occupation. It was at this time that he composed, 
in the French language, his well-known grammar, " Le 
Maitre d' Anglais ; " a grammar intended for Frenchmen 
to learn English. It is a work of sterling value, which I 
fomid still in use in France in 1862, revue and corrigee by 
various editors. "What other French grammar can boast 
of active, vigorous life, after an existence of nearly a hun- 
dred years ? 

On coming to America, Cobbett seems to have turned 
his thoughts towards serving the United States Govern- 
ment in some capacity ; for he sent to Mr. Jefferson, then 
Secretary of State in the "Washington Administration, a 
letter of recommendation from Mr. Adams, who was at 
that time American Ambassador at the Hague, to whom 



Ufe aii a 2'eachcr a)id Author. 37 

Cobbett had been recommended by a Mr. Short, and re- 
ceived the following reply : 

"Philadelphia, Nov. 5, 1792. 

"Sir, — In acknowledging the receipt of yom- favor of 
the 2d instant, I wish it were in my power to announce 
to you any way in which I could be useful to you. Mr. 
Short's assiu-ances of youi' merit would be a sufficient m- 
ducement to me. Public offices in our government ai'e so 
few, and of so little value, as to oifer no resource to tal- 
ent. ^^Tien you shall have been here some small time, 
you will be able to judge in what way you can set out 
with the best prospect of success, and if I can serve you 
in it, I shall be very hapjDy to do it. 

" I am, Sir, your very humble Servant, 

"Thomas Jefferson." 

I shall have a word to say regarding this letter by and 
by ; but I cannot help, remarking here, that it seems Cob- 
bett came to America with such disgust for the govern- 
ment of his o\\Ti country, at whose hands he had, accord- 
ing to his own account, received such unfair treatment, 
and into the corruptions of whose army-system he had 
had such a close view, that he had made \ip his mind to 
become a citizen of the United States, and if possible to 
serve the Eepubhc jander Washington. He almost con- 
fesses as much in his announcement of prmciples in the 
opening number of the new paper which he started on his 
retm-n to England in 1800 : " In the days of youth and 
ignorance, I was led to believe that co'))ifort,freedo)n avd 
virtue tcere exclusively the lot of Republicans. A very 
short trial convinced me of my eiTor, admonished me to 
repent of my folly, and urged me to compensate for the 
mjustice of the opinion which I conceived." 

In 'serving the Republic he wovild, of coui-se, have 
become an American citizen, and had Mr. Jefferson given 
him some position in the government, what a different 
history would have been that of William Cobbett! 



38 Life of William Cobbett 

Cobbett's fii'st production as an author was prompted 
by certain occurrences on the arrival in America of the 
celebrated Dr. Priestley, the radical reformer and Uni- 
tarian philosopher. Priestley had been so roughly 
handled in England by his own countrymen, that he 
determined to emigrate to the United States, and on 
arriving in New York (1793), he was gladly received by a 
deputation of admirers, who presented him with ad- 
dresses of welcome. In these addresses and in the reply 
of Dr. Priestley, such disparaging allusions were made to 
England and her government, that it roused Cobbett's ire 
to see an Enghshman treating the government of his own 
country so disrespectfully, and suffering it to be so disre- 
spectfully treated by others. Cobbett wi'ote a pamphlet 
on the affair, entitled " Observations on the Emigration 
of a Martyr ;" which is a strong attack on Priestley and 
his doctrines, and in which he contends that the philos- 
opher had no good reason to complain of the treatment 
he received, and that the country he left was by no means 
such a despotism as he represented it. 

In one of his letters to Mr. Pitt, in 1804, Cobbett 
gives an account of the raatter ; and it is curious to 
observe by what an apparently accidental circumstance he 
became a writer. " It is now, su-, ten years," he says, 
" since I first took up the pen with an intention to write 
for the press on political subjects ; and the occasion of 
my domg so is too curious in itself, as well as of too much 
importance as to the sequel, not to be described somewhat 
in detail. At the memorable epoch of Doctor Priestley's 
emigration to America, I followed, in the city of Phila- 
delphia, the profession of teacher of the English language 
10 Frenchmen. Newspapers were a luxury for which I 
had little relish, and which, if I had been ever so fond of 
them, I had not time to enjoy. The manifestoes, there- 
fore, of the Doctor, upon his landing in that country, and 
the malicious attacks upon the monarchy and monarch of 



Life as a Teacher and Author. 39 

England, wliich certain societies in America thereupon 
issued through the press, would, had it not been for a 
circumstance piu'ely accidental, have escaped, probably 
forever, not only my animadversion, but my knowledge of 
their existence. One of my scholars, who was a person 
that we in England would call a coffee-house poHtieian, 
chose, for once, to read his newspaper by way of lesson ; 
and it happened to be the very paper which contained the 
addresses presented to Doctor Priestley at New York, 
together with liis replies. My scholar, who was a sort of 
repubhcan, or, at best, but half a monarchist, appeared 
dehghted with the invectives against England, to which 
he was very much disposed to add. Those EngUshmen 
who have been abroad, particularly if they have had time 
to make a comparison between the country they are in 
and that which they left, well know how difficult it is, 
upon occasions such as I have been describing, to refrain 
from expressing their indignation and resentment ; and 
there is not, I trust, much reason to suppose that I should, 
in this respect, experience less difficulty than another. 
The dispute was as warm as might reasonably be expected, 
between a Frenchman, uncommonly violent even for a 
Frenchman, and an Englishman not remarkable for sang 
froid; and the result was, a declared resolution, on my 
part, to write and publish a pamphlet in defense of my 
country, which pamphlet he pledged himself to ansAver. 
His pledge was forfeited : it is known that mine was not. 
" Thus, sir, it was that I became a writer on politics. 
' Happy for you,' you Avill say, ' if you had continued at 
your verbs and your nouns !' Perhaps it would ; but the 
fact absorbs the reflection : whether it was for my good, 
or otherwise, I entered on the career of political writing ; 
and, -without adverting to the circumstances under which 
others have entered on it, I think it will not be beHeved 
that the pen was ever taken up from a motive more pure 
and laudable." 



40 Life of Williwn Cobbett. 

The following fable, directed agaiust the democrats, 
occurs in this his first pamphlet. Sir Henry Bulwer 
thinks it recalls the style of S^vift, in the "Tale of a 
Tub," which work Cobbett admired so much. Mr. Wat- 
son destroys the whole pith of the fable, and especially 
that which gives it a resemblance to Swift, by omitting 
or changing certain words in it which, though coarse, are 
in no way corrupting : 

"In a pot-shop, well stocked with wares of all sorts, 
a discontented, ill-formed pitcher unluckily bore the 
sway. One day after the mortifying neglect of several 
customers, ' Gentlemen,' said he, addressing himself to 
his brown brethren in general, ' Gentlemen, with your 
permission, Ave are a set of tame fools, without ambition, 
without coui-age. Condemned to the vilest uses, we suf- 
fer all without murmuring. Let us dare to declare our- 
selves, and we shall soon see the difference. That superb 
ewer, which, like us, is but earth ; those gilded jars, vases, 
china, and in short, all those elegant nonsenses, mu.st 
yield to our strength, and give place to owe superior 
merit.' 

"This civic harangue was received with peals of ap- 
plause; and the pitcher, chosen president, became the 
organ of the assembly. Some, however, more moderate 
than the rest, attempted to calm the minds of the multi- 
tude; but all those which are called jordens became in- 
tractable. Eager to vie with the bowls and cups, they 
were impatient, almost to madness, to quit then- obscure 
abodes, to shine upon the table, kiss the hp, and ornament 
the cupboard. 

"In vam did a wise water-jug — some say it was a plat- 
ter — make them a long and serious discoiirse upon the 
peacefulness of their vocation. 'Those,' he says, 'who 
are destmed to great employments, are rarely the most 
happy. We are all of the same clay, it is true ; but he 
who made us foi^med us for different functions. One is 



Tlie Political Parties in the United Stateti. 41 

for ornament, another is for use. The posts the most im- 
portant are often the most necessaiy. Our employments 
ai'e extremely different, and so are our talents.' 

" This had a wonderful effect. The most stupid began 
to open theii- ears ; and perhaps it would have succeeded, 
if a grease-pot had not cried out in a decisive tone, ' You 
reason hke an ass ; to the devil with you and yoiu* silly 
lessons !' 

"Now the scale was tiu*ned again. All the horde of 
pans, pitchers, and jordens applauded the superior elo- 
quence and reasoning of the grease-pot. In short, they 
determined on the enterprise. But a dispute arose who 
should be chief ; all could command, but none obey. It 
was then you might have lieai'd a clatter : pots, pans, and 
pitchers, mugs, jugs, and jordens, all put themselves m 
motion at once ; and so vnsely and with so much vigor 
were then* operations conducted, that the whole was soon 
changed, not into china, but into rubbish.''' 

This fable is, I think, worthy of a place beside the an- 
cient fable of the Stomach and the Members of the Body, 
which Shakespeare, in Coriolanus, causes a patrician to re- 
peat for the edification of the plebeians, the <iemocrats of 
the Roman republic. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES. COBBETT SIDES 

. WITH Washington's party. 

There was now a great excitement m this country over 
the French Revolution, and the difference of opinion and 
the discussions regarding it were so sharp and so wide- 
spread, and the interest in it so intense and absorbing, 
that even the acts of our own government were approA''ed 
or condemned according to tlieir influence on Finance, and 



42 Life of William Cohhett. 

sentiments foi* and against the French Revolutionists 
were the distinguishing characteristics of our own political 
parties. The friends of the French Revolutionists (or, as 
Cobbett always called them, of the Sans-culottes) ap- 
plauded their acts throughout, and advocated alhance 
with them, the sending them material aid, and a declara- 
tion of war against then- enemies ; while the other party 
advocated non-interference in the quarrels of France or 
in those of any other European power. At the head of 
the latter party, the Federalists, were Washington and 
Hamilton; at the head of the former, the Republicans, 
were Jefferson and Randolph. The FederaHsts favored 
commercial intercourse with England and the moulding 
of our Constitution in some things after that of England ; 
while the Republicans desired exclusive intercourse with 
France, the imitating of everything French, and the avoid- 
ance of everything English. Washington is said to have 
been the only man in America who from the first, like 
Edmund Burke in England, rightly understood the char- 
acter of the French Revolution ; and it was by this knowl- 
edge, and by firmly holding on in the path of duty, that 
he saved the country from a ruinous war. Thus it was, 
too, as everybody familiar with American history will re- 
member, that his steadfast opposition to the schemes of 
the French^action brought down unmerited opprobrium 
and reproaches upon his venerable head. 

Cobbett naturally sympathized with the party which 
favored intercourse with his native land; and he now 
began to make use of his new-found instrument of power, 
the pen, to show why Americans should turn their sym- 
pathies towards England rather than towards France. He 
sided, therefore, with Washington's party. In a Federal- 
ist paper of the day, The Gazette of the United States, 
appears this significant paragraph : " The enemies of the 
President of the United States, and of the Federal Gov- 
ernment, pretend to be affronted that a man born in Eng- 



The Political Parties in the U')dted /States. 48 

land should presume to say a ch^il thing of the charactei* 
of George Washington. The consistency of this will ap- 
pear, when the pubhc ai'e assured, that very few of the 
abusive scribblers who slander his reputation have one 
di'op of American blood in their vems." The truth of 
this latter assertion was of coiu'se denied, and all the 
Avriters in question were declaimed to be true-born native 
Americans ; but the poiat was well made, nevertheless. 

"Wlien AVashington's admuiistration succeeded hi con- 
cluding, conditionally, the Jay treaty of commerce with 
England, and while the treaty was awaiting confirmation 
by the Senate, Cobbett mightily aided the favorable re- 
ception wliich that treaty received from the Senate, by a 
brilhant and conclusive essay in its support. In this essay 
he clearly refuted the arguments of its opponents, and 
plainly showed the superior advantages of intercourse 
with England, as compai'ed with those resulting from in- 
tercoui'se Avith France. The treaty was confirmed, and 
the victory was on the English side. " The importance 
of that victory to England," says Cobbett, in the same 
letter to Pitt, " it would, perhaps, be difficult tp render 
intelligible to the mmd of Lord Melville, without the aid 
of a comparison ; and, therefore, it may be necessary to 
observe, that it was infinitely more important than all his 
victories in the West Indies put together, which latter 
victories cost England thii'ty thousand men, and fifty 
millions of money." And it was to the service rendered 
by this essay that "Wuidham referred, Avhen he declai'ed 
in the House of Connnons, whilst defending Cobbett 
against an attack by Sheridan, that he had in America 
"rendered such service to his covxntry as entitled liun to 
a statue of gold."' 



44 Life of Williavh Cobbett. 

CHAPTEK VIII. 

IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT. 

Cobbett became a thorn in the side of the French party, 
whom he attacked with snch vehemence and in a style so 
mercilessly severe that they nicknamed him " Peter Porcu- 
pine ; " a name which he immediately assumed as his nom 
deplume, and which he rendered famous before he left 
the country. He pubushed against the French sympa- 
thizing party a number of pamphlets, of which it is only 
necessary to mention the titles to show their character : 
"The Dispute with England," "A Bone to Gnaw for the 
Democrats," "A Kick for a Bite," and "A New Year s Gift 
to the Democrats." In these he vividly displayed the 
atrocities of the Sans-culottes, and showed what dastardly 
wretches those men were with whom the Democrats in 
America sympathized. 

In 1797, he pubhshed a daily paper, which he called 
"Porcupine's Gazette," in which he continued to attack 
the French faction with his accustomed energy, and to 
defend his own cormtiy and its laws against all comers. 
In this employment he created such a swarm of enemies 
that six different pamphlets or pasquinades, containing all 
manner of calunmies were written and pubhshed about 
him. The titles of these pamphlets are sufficient to uidi- 
cate thek character: "A Boaster for Peter Porcupine," 
"The History of a Porcupine," "A PHI for Porcupine," 
"The Impostor Detected," "The Httle Innocent Porcu- 
pine's Hornet-Nest, "The last Dying Speech and Confes- 
sion of Peter Porcupine." Some of them contained such 
shameless slanders, that, in sheer self-defense, he was ob- 
hged to have his marriage certificate and his certificate of 
discharge from the army recertified and j^ublished. We 
have sometimes heard it said that there were more gentle- 



L% the Thick of the Fight. 45 

men in this country iu the time of Washington than there 
ai-e nowadays; bvit we think it will be found that in 
pai-ty warfai-e the gentlemen were then about as rare, or, 
if you please, as rancorous and as slanderous, as they are 
now. Cobbett was accused of almost as many crimes as 
Horace Greeley or James Gordon Bennett have been ac- 
cused of, and with about equal justice. To meet this fire 
of pasquinades and lamj)oons, he, like the prairie-hunter, 
lit another fire, and published another pamphlet on the 
same subject, but of an opposite tendency, entitled, "The 
Tiaie Adventui'es of Peter Porcupine," in which he gives 
an interestuig account of his singular career, and makes 
some vigorous thrusts at his enemies. This is the auto- 
biography trom which I have already made several ex- 
tracts. Of course, as an apologist of England, it did not 
suit him, in this production, to take any notice of the 
Court-martial afl^au' in which he was once so vitally inter- 
ested. If his enemies had found that out, what a handle 
to thrash him with they would have made of it ! It is also 
an example of how slowly mformation spread in those days. 
With such notoriety as Cobbett had attained, such a thing 
would not, at the present time, have remained a fortnight 
concealed. 

Cobbett was by no means discouraged by this flood of 
abuse ; on the contrary, it is pretty evident he rather en- 
joyed it, for he was seldom more completely in his ele- 
ment than when attacking and bein^ attacked. Witness 
the opening j^aragraphs of his remarks on these pam- 
phlets : 

" ' Deab Fathee, — When you used to set me off in the 
morning, di-essed in my blue smock-frock and woolen 
spatterdashes, with my bag of bread and cheese and bot- 
tle of small-beer swung over my shoulder on the httle 
crook that my old godfather Boxall gave me, Httle did 
you imagine that I should one day become so great a 
man as to have my pictme stuck in the windows, and 



46 Life of WilUam Cohhett. 

have four whole books published about me in the course 
of one week.' Thus begins a letter which I wrote to my 
father yesterday morning, and which, if it reaches him, 
will make the old man drink an extraordinary pot of ale 
to my health. Heaven bless him! I think I see him 
now, by his old-fashioned fireside, reading the letter to 
his neighbors. ' Ay, ay,' says he, ' Will will stand his 
ground wherever he goes.' And so I will, father, in spite 
of all the hell of democracy. 

" "When I had the honor to serve King George, I was 
elated enough at the putting on of my worsted shoulder- 
knot, and afterward my silver-laced coat, '\\liat must my 
feehngs be, then, upon seeing half a dozen authors, all 
doctors or the devil knows what, writing about me at one 
time, and ten times that number of printers, bookbinders, 
and booksellers, bustling, running and flying about ui all 
directions, to announce my fame to the impatient public ? 
. . . The public will certainly excuse me if, after all 
this, I should begin to think myself a person of some 
importance. 

" At the very moment that I am wi'iting, these sorry 
fellows [the authors of the pamphlets] are huggmg them- 
selves in the thought that they have silenced me, eiU me 
up, as they call it. It would require other pens than 
theks to silence me. I shall keep plodding on in my old 
way, as I used to do at the plough ; and I think it will 
not be looked upon as any very extraordinary trait of 
vanity to say, that Porcupine will be read when the very 
names of their bungling pamphlets are forgotten." 

It was at this time that a circumstance happened, 
which, like others of a similar character, of which we will 
by and by learn, does him great honor. After his prose- 
cution and conviction for libel against the government in 
England in 1809, he wrote a defence of his conduct, in 
which, while defending himself against the charge of 
writing for hase lucre, he states the following circum- 



Hov^ he Defied the Democrats. 47 

stance : " In America the King's minister made, and not 
at all improperly, offers of service to me, on the part of 
the ministry at home. The offer was put as an offer of 
service to any relations that I might have in England, 
and my answer was, that if I could earn, anything myself 
wherewith to assist my relations, I should assist them ; 
hut that I would not be the cause of their receiving any- 
thing oitt of the lyuUic purse. Mi-. Liston, then our 
mmister to America, can bear testimony to the truth of 
this statement. . . . From my outset as a wi'iter to 
the present houi*, I have always preferred principle to 
gain." 

Being one day in a shop in Philadelphia, luiknown, or 
unobserved, he heard himself charactertized by the Eng- 
lish consul as " a wild fellow ;" upon which he remarks, in 
his Gazette, " I shall only observe, that when the king 
bestows upon me about £500 sterling a year, perhaps I 
may become a tame felloio, and hear my master, my 
friends, and my parents belied and execrated, without 
saying a single word in their defence." 



CHAPTER IX. 

HOW HE DEFIED THE DEMOCRATS. 

In 1796, having quarrelled with his publisher — who, by 
the bye, seems to have received the lion's share in the 
profits of Cobbett's productions, for when Cobbett of- 
fered to repurchase them from him, after the issue of 
several editions, for the same sum he had received for the 
original copyiights, the offer was refused — he determined 
to publish his owni works himself in future, and opened a 
shop in Philadelphia as bookseller and publisher. He 
must be allowed to describe in his own words the very 
chai'acteristic manner in which he did this : 



48 Life of William Cobbett. 

" The eyes of the Democrats and the French, who still 
lorded it over the city, and who still owed me a mutual 
grudge, were fixed upon me. I thought my situation 
somewhat perilous. Such truths as I had published, no 
man had dared to utter in the United States since the 
Rebellion. I knew that these truths had mortally offend- 
ed the leading men among the Democrats, who could, at 
any time, muster a mob quite sufficient to destroy my 
house and murder me. I had not a friend to whom I 
could look with any reasonable hope of receiving sufficient 
support ; and, as to the law, I had seen too much of Repub- 
hcan justice to expect anything but persecution from that 
quarter. In short, there were in Philadelphia about ten 
thousand persons, all of whom would have rejoiced to see 
me murdered; and there might probably be two thou- 
sand who would have been very sorry for it ; but not above 
fifty of whom would have stirred an inch to save me. 

"As the time approached for opening my shop, my 
friends grew more anxious for my safety. It was recom- 
mended to me to be cautious how I exposed at my win- 
dow anything that might provoke the people ; and, above 
all, not to put up any aristoc7'atical portraits, which 
would certainly cause my windows to be demolished. 

"I saw the danger, but also saw that I must, at once, 
set all danger at defiance, or hve in everlasting subjection 
to the prejudices and caprice of a democratical mob. I re- 
solved on the former ; and as my shop was to open on a 
Monday morning, I employed myself all day on Sunday 
in preparing an exhibition that I thought would put the 
courage and power of my enemies to the test. I put up 
in my windows, which were very large, all the portraits 
that I had in my possession of kings, queens, priyices and 
nobles. I had all the Enghsh ministry, several of the 
bishops and judges, the most famous admirals, and, in 
short, every pictui-e that I thought hkely to excite rage in 
the enemies of Great Britain. 



The CoHi't-Martial Again. 49 

"Early on tlie Monday morning I took down my shut- 
ters. Such a sight had not been seen in Philadelphia for 
twentj' 3'eai's. Never, since the beginning of the Rebel- 
lion, had any one dared to hoist at his window the por- 
trait of George III. 

•" In order to make the test as perfect as possible, I had 
put up some of the worthies of the Revolution, and had 
found out fit companions for them. I had coupled Frank- 
lin and Mai'at together, and in another place McKean and 
Anker strom." 

As might have been expected, this daring exhibition 
created a storm of rage and indignation among his ene- 
mies, the Democrats ; but, although one fellow threatened 
in an anonymous letter to have his house burnt if he did 
not remove the obnoxious j)ictui'es, no violence whatever 
was offered to him, and the discreeter portion of the com- 
mimity, as his biographer of 1835 says, admired the coui'- 
age of the Englishman, though they deplored the zeal of 
the pai'tisan. 



CHAPTER X. 

THK COURT-MARTIAL AGAIN. AN ILL-FOUNDED ACCUSATION. 

It is here that we have to recur to the Court-martial 
affair. Mr. Watson, Cobbett's most-often-quoted biogra- 
pher, in finding that Cobbett hu-ed his house and shop 
at a rent of $1200 a year, and j)aid one year's rent in ad- 
vance, thinks it necessary to unfold a peculiar theory of 
his OAvn to explain "by what means Cobbett could have 
acquii-ed sufficient pecuniary means to take such a house, 
and to stock it with the necessary materials for commenc- 
ing business." He says : " When he quitted England for 
France, he was possessed of a hiuidred and fifty guineas, 
which Mi-s. Cobbett had returned to him at Woolwich; 
3 



50 -^(/'^ ^f William Cobhett. 

and he may have had another hoard of guineas earned in 
America the same way as the first. But these supphes 
must have been pretty well exhausted during his six- 
months stay in France, with his wife, and his passage to 
America with her. On aniving in America, he obtained 
tuition, which yielded him about a hundred and forty dol- 
lars a month — or, as his sons put it, between foui* and 
five hundred pounds a year ; and he had received eighty 
pounds for his Porcupine pamjDhlets. He also made some 
translations from the French for the Bradfords, one 
of which was Martin's 'Law of Nations,' dedicated to 
Washington. He had now been four yeaxs in America, 
and, with his frugal way of hving, he might have saved 
a few score pounds, if his income was as great every 
year as his sons represent it. But it would appear that 
he could hardly have saved so much as to enable him to 
enter on a large bookselling business in exjoensive premi- 
ses. We shall find, too, that when four years afterwards 
he brought his business to a close, he was in j^ossession 
of greater property than this business, considering the 
deductions Avhich we shall see that it suffered, could have 
been expected to realize. These computations induce us 
to surmise that he must have had another soui'ce of gain ; 
that the Captain Lane who visited him when the Coui't- 
martial on his brother-officers was coming on, did not 
visit him empty handed, but presented him with some 
substantial inducement to withdraw from the prosecution. 
Wliat, indeed, but something of such a nature could have 
moved him to withdi'aw from it in so extraordinary, so 
dishonorable a manner ?" 

With between foiu' and five hundred pounds a year for 
tuition, with eighty pounds for his pamj)hlets, and with 
probably an additional sum for incidental or casual lite- 
rary services, and an unknown sum for his translations — - 
for it. is not likely that the first three sources of gain 
should include every penny of the income of a man of 



2Vie Court-Martial Again. 51 

such mental resources as Cobbett — he, by Watson's own 
showing-, could hai'dly have had an mcome of much less 
than five hiuidi'ed pomids a year. "What! he had five 
hundi'ed povuids a year and saved only a few score poimds? 
Considering the cheapness of living at that time, and the 
simj^licity and frugality of Cobbett's mamier of living, is 
it not much more likely that he had saved at least a hun- 
di'ed and fifty poiuids a year ? And if in four years he 
had saved, we will say five hund):ed pounds, why should 
he not have been able, without extraneous aid, to pay two 
hundi'ed and fifty-pounds a year for a shop and dwelling- 
house'? Why sh6uld he not have been able to pay one 
year in advance and to stock his shop % It was no doubt 
his success in money-making that made him venttu'e so 
lai'gely in his new undertaking. Besides, a bookseller, on 
setting up a business, does not always pay cash for his 
stock. 

But what is Mr. Watson's authority for this assertion 
concerning the payment of twelve hundi'ed dollars (two 
hvmdred and forty pounds) rent in advance % The letter 
of a scurrilous ruffian calling himself Paul Hedgehog; 
a letter containing more mean, low, dii'ty calumnies 
and Hes to the square inch than perhaps anything that 
has ever been printed. The author of this vile, venomous 
attack on Cobbett was the friend and coadjutor, it seems, 
of Ben Bache (he may have been Ben Bache himself), of 
the Aurora newspaper, in which it appeared, and whose 
editor was hardly less fertile than his friend in atrocious 
calumnies on the loyal EngUshman. Of Bache we shall 
leam something more presently. This Paul Hedgehog — ■ 
who certainly seems, judging from his choice of a name, to 
have had a coiTect perception of the class of beings with 
which he had afiinity — accused Cobbett of being an es- 
caped convict, a thief, a runaway, pursued by tipstaffs for 
"something more than scribbling," a fugitive felon, a 
beast, and so on ; and yet, with all this, he has " only dis- 



52 Life of 'William Cobbett. 

closed part of the truth." Just Hsteii to a few sentences, 
which the reader will excuse me for quoting: "His evil 
genius pursued him here [in France], and, as his fingers 
toere as long as ever, he was obliged as suddenly to leave 
the Repubhc, which has now drawn forth all his venom for 
her attempt to do him justice. On his arrival in this 
country, he figured for some time as a pedagogue ; but as 
this employment scarcely furnished him salt for his por- 
ridge, — he having been literally without bread to eat, and 
not a second shirt to his back,— he resumed his old occu- 
pation of scribblmg. Having little chance of success in 
the other employmeiits which drove him to this covmtry, 
his talent at lies and billingsgate rhetoric introduced him 
to the notice of a certam foreign agent, who was known 
during the Revolution by the name of traitor. This said 
agent has been known to pay frequent visits to Peter 
(Porcupine). To atone for his transgressions in the 
mother country, as well as to get a little more bread 
to eat than he had been accustomed to, he enlisted in 
the cause of His Gracious Majesty. From the extreme of 
poverty and filth, he has suddenly sprouted into at least 
the appearance of better condition; for he has taken a 
house for the sale of his large poison at the enormous 
rent of tioelve hundred dollars a year, and has paid a 
year''s rent in advance!" 

This is the man who is Mi*. Watson's authority. 
Could there possibly be a worse one? Is any credit 
to be placed m the assertions of such a monstrous 
creature ? Mr. Watson supposes that Cobbett had about 
300 guuieas when he set out for France. What a 
prodigious sum 300 guuieas is in an obscure village of 
France! and at that time, when a guinea could prob- 
ably pay for a month's board and lodging in the best 
inn in the place ! To show how cheap one may live and 
learn in some parts of France, the writer of this narrative 
may be allowed to state that, some twenty years ago, he 



The Court- Martial Again. 53 

lived for one year in a respectable boarding-school in the 
noi'th of France (Pension Brunois, Samt Quentin),in Avhich 
one huinh'ed boys received plain board and fan* tuition in 
the main branches of a French education f or, /ji'<s hundred 
francs ($100) (/ year ! Is it likely, then, that Cobbett and 
his wife, both of whom had been accustomed to the most 
frugal way of hving, and both of whom had shown how 
they could save money : is it hkely that they, in 1792, spent 
seventy-Jive hundred francs ($1500) in six months, at a 
time when hving was so much cheaper than it is now? 
Is it not probable, too, that he began to try his hand at 
teaching his native tongue before he left France 1 Could 
such a man as Cobbett remain absolutely idle for six 
months ? But it is useless to make fui'ther suppositions 
in such a case, in which I think I have shown that there 
is but httle foundation for Mr. Watson's ungenerous sus- 
picion, that Cobbett had paid his rent and stocked his 
shop by means of a bribe received fi-om the men whom 
he had accused of dishonesty. 

When we consider that Cobbett, at the time of the 
Com-t-martial, was alone and friendless in the great city 
of London ; that he was newly married, and no doubt de- 
su'ous of enjoying the agreeable society of his wife in peace 
and quietness ; that he probably hstened to the entreaties 
of that wife to abstam from proceedings that caused so much 
annoyance and uneasiness, and the result of which seemed 
so doubtful and dangerous ; when we consider the rank 
and hifluential comiections of those whom he was to 
prosecute, and that he fomid hunself single-handed and 
almost powerless in his accusations against them, not 
being able to prociue the thschai'ge from the ai"my of even 
one single man as a witness ; when we consider the num- 
ber of difficulties and obstacles that suiTovmded him, and 
the black and ominous signs that presented themselves 
before him, in case he persisted in his design, and failed 
to convict the accused parties, is it surprising that 



54 Life of Williain Cohbett. 

he should have acted as he did ? "Who would not have 
had serious apprehensions, and perhaps an eye tow^ard re- 
treat, under such ominous circumstances ? It was perhaps 
an error ; he should have stood his ground ; but I think it 
unfair to suppose him bribed because he did not. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

THE MEETING OF COBBETT AND TALLEYRAND. ^ 

Among the celebrities with whom Cobbett came in con- 
tact in America was the famous Talleyi'and, who was at 
that time living as a kind of refugee, or, as Cobbett 
thought, a spy, in the United States. He had been ordered 
out of England (1794), whither he had escaped at the be- 
ginning of the reign of terror, and had now taken refuge 
in the United States. Here he natui-ally, though it ap- 
pears unauthoritatively, exerted himself to serve his coun- 
try by enlisting the sympathy of Americans on the side 
of France. He was known to be on intimate terms with 
Jefferson, the head of the French faction, and he main- 
tained close relations with Adet, the French minister. So 
he and Cobbett came together. Never, perhaps, did two 
men more dissimilar in character meet at the same fire- 
side : the blunt, fearless, outspoken Englishman, and the 
wary, cautious, pohtic Frenchman. Talleyrand wished to 
gain Cobbett over to the French pai'ty, and no doubt im- 
agined he could do this as easily with the Englishman as 
he had, in his time, gained over many a Frenchman to his 
views. In Cobbett's account of this interview, he dis- 
plays, in his usual unreserved style, all his dislike and dis- 
trust of the astute political wke-puller : 

" That the apostate Talleyrand was a spy in this coun- 
try is evident from his being afterward received with 
open arms by the very men who had proscribed him. But 



The Meeting of Cohhett a)»d Talleyrand. 55 

I luive a -word or two to say about this bishop. First, lie 
set up as a merchant and dealer at New York, which he 
continued till he had acqim-ed what knowledge he thought 
was to be come at anioi*g persons engaged in mercantile 
affairs ; then he assumed the character of a gentleman, at 
the same time removing to Philadelphia, where he got ac- 
cess to persons of the first rank, with all those who were 
connected with, or in the confidence of, tlie government. 
Some months after his arrival in this city, he left a mes- 
sage with a fi'iend of his, requesting me to meet him at 
that friend's house. Several days passed before the meet- 
ing took place. I had no business to call me that way, 
and therefore did not go. At last this modern Judas 
and I got seated by the same fireside. I expected that 
he wanted to expostulate with me on the severe treatment 
he had met at my hands : I had called him an apostate, a 
hypocrite, and every other name of which he was deserv- 
ing. I therefore leave the reader to imagine my astonish- 
ment, when I heard him begin by complimenting me on 
my wit and learning. He praised several of my pam- 
phlets, the ' New Year's Gift ' in particular, and still spoke 
of them as mine. I did not acknowledge myself the 
author, of course; but yet he would insist that I was; 
and, at any rate, they reflected, he said, infinite honor on 
the author, let him be who he might. Having carried 
this species of flattery as far as he judged it safe, he 
asked me, with a vast deal of apparent seriousness, 
whether I had received my education at Oxford or at 
Cambridge ! Hitherto I had kept my countenance pretty 
well ; but this abominable stretch of hypocrisy, and the 
placid manner and silver accent with which it was pro- 
noiinced, would have forced a laugh from a Quaker in the 
midst of a meeting. I don't recollect what reply I made 
him ; but this I recollect well, I gave him to understand 
I was no trout, and consequently was not to be caught 
by tickling. 



56 I^'^f^ of Williain Cohbett. 

"This information led him to something more solid. 
He began to talk about business. I was no flour mer- 
chant, but I taught English ; and, as luck would have it, 
this was the very commodity that Bishop Perigord wanted. 
. . . He knew the English language as well as I did, but 
he wanted to have dealings with me in some way or other. 

" I knew that notwithstanding his being proscribed at 
Paris, he was extremely intimate with Adet ; and this cir- 
cumstance led me to suspect his real business in the 
United States. I therefore did not care to take him as a 
scholar. I told him that, being engaged in a translation 
for the press, I could not possibly quit home. He would 
very gladly come to my house. I cannot say but what it 
would have been a great satisfaction to me to have seen 
the ci-cUvant Bishop of Autun, the guardian of the holy 
oil that anointed the heads of the descendants of St. 
Louis, come trudging through the dirt to receive a lesson 
from me ; but, on the other hand, I did not want a French- 
man to take a survey either of my desk or my house. My 
price for teaching was six dollars a month ; he offered me 
tioenty ; but I refused ; and before I left him I gave him 
clearly to understand that I was not to be purchased." 

Would not this Molierean scene, the meeting of Cobbett 
and Talleyrand, make a capital subject for a painter? 



CHAPTER XII. 

EDITORIAL WAKFARE. — -A MILD CORRESPONDENT. 

As a specimen of the attacks which were made on Cob- 
bett, and of the manner in which he replied to those attacks, 
the following paragraphs will serve. The first is from 
the Aurora — a paper published in the interest of the 
French faction and edited by Benjamin Bache, a grand- 
son of Benjamin FrankUn: 



Editorial Warfare. 57 

" In conversation, a few days ago, the British corporal 
declared that he never would forgive the Americans for 
theii- rebellion against their king, and that he never 
would rest until they were reduced to then" former obedi- 
ence. If the fellow, whose hack still exhibits the marhs 
of his former virtue, should dare to deny this, it can be 
substantiated by undoubted evidence. After this sj)eech, 
it may be well to repeat that Peter Porcupine is the 
champion of the Federalists." 

" Now, pray sir," retorts Cobbett, addressing the editor 
of the Aurora, " is this of your own manufacture, or is it 
really from a coiTespondent % If you own it for yom's, I 
assert that you are a liar and an infamous scoundrel ; if 
you do not, your correspondent has my free leave to take 
those appellations to himself. ... I tell you, IVIr. Bache, 
you will get nothing by me in a war of words ; so you 
may as well abandon the contest while you can do it with 
a good grace. I do not wish — and I call on the public to 
remember what I say — I do not wish to fill my paper with 
personal satu'e and abuse ; but I will not be insulted with 
impunity, and particularly by you. I have not forgotten 
your pointing out the propriety of describing my person, 
and hinting at the same time the dai'k purpose of so doing. 
. . , But it is useless, my dear Bache, to say anything 
more about the matter. Why should we keep buffetting 
and spaiTing at each other? "Why should we rend and 
tear oirr poor reputations to pieces, merely for the diver- 
sion of the spectators! A great number of persons, 
rather lovers of fun than of decency, have ah'eady pitted 
us, and are prepared to enjoy the combat. Let us disap- 
point them. Let us walk about arm in arm. . . . Your 
pride may indeed reject the society of a British corporal, 
as you very justly style me ; but, my deal* sir, we are now 
both of the same honest calling. Nobody looks uj^on 
you as the grandson of a philosopher or ambassador. 
People call you — they do indeed — ' Ben Bache, the news- 
3* 



58 Life of WilUani Gohhett. 

man,' — nothing more, I assure you, and as they have no 
regard for your illustrious descent, so you may be sure 
they will not long remember the meanness of mine." 

Strong language seems to have been the order of the 
day among the politicians of that age. If Dr. Johnson, 
who loved a good hater, could have read the Philadelphia 
papers at this time, he would have been thoroughly grati- 
fied. The following anonymous letter, addressed to Cob- 
bett, vnll serve as a pretty good specimen of the bind of 
haters by whom he was surrounded: 

"Porcupine — You infernal ruffian, it is my full inten- 
tion, when or wherever I meet you, to give you one of the 
greatest lambastings you ever got. My reason for doing 
so, you vagabond, is for writing and speaking in such a 
disgraceful manner as you do against the greatest and 
chief heads of our city. How dare you, you corporal, or 
any other British subject or slave, have the impudence to 
speak to a free man ? I think it too great an honor con- 
ferred on you to be permitted to tread on this blessed 
ground, for fear of contaminating it as you have in a great 
measure done already by your hell-fire paper, and the 
blackguard scurrilous pieces it contains. Believe me, you 
infernal ruffian, it is my full intention to give you a 
damned whipping when I meet you. When you publish 
this, take care of the streets and alleys you walk in." 

"This is to inform this infamously /ree man,"' remarked 
Cobbett on printing this gentle epistle, " that I know he 
is a base scoundrel, and that he no more dares attack me 
than he dares go to any country where there is a gal- 
lows." 

Mr. "Watson tells the following story of a personal 
encounter between Cobbett and Bache, which, he says, 
is the only occasion, as far as he has discovered, on which 
Cobbett exercised personal violence against an enemy. 

" One day, as Bache was coming out of the Cross Keys, 
the great democratic place of assembly, he met Cobbett 



Editorial 'Warfare. 59 

face to face. 'Sii',' said he, witli a scowl, 'your name is 
"William Cobbett.' Cobbett admitted the charge. 'Then 
I tell you, William Cobbett,' he continued, 'that you are 
a — ai'e a — a very great — yes ; William Cobbett, you know 
me ; my name is Bache, and you have thought proper in 
youi- villainous paper to hold me up to public ridicule and 
contempt!' 'Indeed,' rejoined Cobbett, 'I always pay 
every one his due ; but if the creature be greatly beneath 
my notice, I generally give him a thrashing.' He was 
proceedmg to say something more, when he was inter- 
mjpted by Bache, saying, 'You are a pest! You are a 
nuisance ! You are a disgrace to the country that gave 
you a shelter when you could not find one in the country 
that gave you bu*th, and which cast you out of it, as it 
would a poisonous serpent ! ' This was more than Cob- 
bett could beai', and sayuig, 'You shall find out that the 
serpent can sting ! ' he stretched the editor of the Aurora 
prostrate in the kennel, in the sight of a number of 
bystanders, who had stopped to witness the squabble 
between 'the newspaper men,' as they styled them." 

But it is in his history of Peter Porcupine that he gives 
Ben Bache, thi'ough his much-admu'ed and illustrious 
ancestor, the most tremendous hit that can be conceived, 
equal, I think, to anything in Swift: "Every one will, I 
hope, have the goodness to believe that my grandfather 
was no philosopher. Indeed he was not. He never 
made a lightning-rod, nor bottled up a single quart of 
sunshine, in the whole coru'se of his life; he was no 
almanac-maker, nor quack, nor chimney-doctor, nor soap- 
boiler, nor ambassador, nor printer's devil; neither was 
he a deist; and all his children were born in wedlock. 
The legacies he left were his scythe, his reaping-hook, 
and his flail ; he bequeathed no old and irrevocable debts 
to a hospital ; he never cheated the poor during his life ; 
nor mocked them at his death. He has, it is true, been 
suffered to sleep quietly beneath the green sward ; but if 



60 Life of William Cobbett. 

his descendants cannot point to his statue over the 
door of a Hbrary, they have not the mortification of 
hearing him spoken of as a hbertine, a hypocrite, and an 
infidel." 

If Americans were all Roman Catholics, and Franklin 
were one of their saints, I would not dare to cite this 
passage ; but I imagine the philosopher and patriot has 
such an assured position in the hearts of his countrymen, 
that they will only smile at this audacious comparison of 
grandfathers ! 



CHAPTER XIII. 

LEGAL TROUBLES. RETURN TO ENGLAND. 

Two libel suits were now brought against Cobbett, in 
the first of which he was acquitted, notwithstanding a 
strong effort on the part of his enemies to convict him , 
in the second he was found guilty, condemned to pay a 
heavy fine, and altogether treated so unfairly, that it was 
ultimately the means of driving him from the country. 

The first was a suit brought against him by the Spanish 
minister, on account of certain strictures in Cobbett's 
paper, the Gazette, on his master the King of Spain, 
whom Cobbett stigmatized as a puppet in the hands of the 
five despots of Paris. Though the Judge, Chief-Jus- 
tice McKean, a bitter, unrelenting enemy of Cobbett's 
summed up, in his charge, strongly against him, the 
jury brought in a verdict of acquittal, yet only by a 
majority of one; for in a jury consisting of nineteen, ten 
were for acquittal and nine against it. Judge McKean 
subsequently annoyed and hampered Cobbett by collect- 
ing a number of his writings, which he called libels 
against himself, Jefferson, Dallas, Franklin, and others, 
and compelling him, on his own authority, as Chief-Jus- 



Liegal Troubles. 61 

tice, to go under bonds to keep the peace and be of good 
behavior. 

The second suit was of a different natvu'e In 1793 the 
yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, and carried off 
4,000 of its 60,000 inhabitants. In 1797 it broke out 
again, though it was not so violent as it was in 1793. 
Among the best known medical practitioners of the day 
was Dr. Benjamin Rush, well known as a politician as 
well as physician. Dr. Rush had been a member of the 
Continental Congress, and was one of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence. This circumstance alone 
entitles his name to reverence ; but, as a practitioner of 
physic, he does not seem to have been above criticism. 
Having largely acquired the confidence of the people by 
his pleasant manners and liberality toward the poor, he 
had an immense practice, sometimes prescribing for as 
many as a hundi'ed patients in a day. He had invented 
or discovered a new cure for yellow fever, which consisted 
of bleeding and pui'ging the patient and giving him large 
doses of mercury. According to Cobbett, this bleeding 
sometimes amounted to one hundi'ed and fifty ounces, and 
the pui'ges contained as much as sixty grains of mercury 
and ninety grains of jalap. This remarkable cui'e Dr. 
Rush named the "Samson of medicine," and declared 
that Mdth this cure there was no more danger to be appre- 
hended from yellow fever than from the measles or a 
common cold. Cobbett, in his Gazette^ observed that it 
was justly compared to Samson, for he believed that 
Rush and his partisans had slain more Americans with it 
than Samson slew of the Phihstines, the Israelite having 
slain his thousands, but the Rushites having slain their 
tens of thousands. He compared the author of it to Gil 
Bias's patron, Sangrado, with his hot water and blood- 
letting cm-e ; proclaimed Dr. Rush a quack, and declared 
that when he saw him getting ready to revive the horrors 
of 1793, both his interest and his duty commanded him 



62 Life of William (Jobbett. 

to endeavor to avert them. Cobbett vs^as not alone in his 
unfavorable opinion of Rush's remedies; the editor of 
the United States Gazette also condemned them, and 
various physicians made use of Cobbett's newspaper to 
protest against them. Among others, Dr. Currie, a mem- 
ber of the College of Physicians, declared that " the mode 
of treatment advised by Dr. Rush cannot, in the yellow 
fever, fail of being certain deaths 

The doctor brought a suit for libel against Cobbett, 
which, after repeated postponements, lasting over two 
years — in order, as Cobbett said, to get a jury that suited 
the doctor and his friend McKean — was tried before a 
court of law presided over by Judge Shippen, the minion 
of Cobbett's personal and political enemy, Judge Mc- 
Kean. Judge Shippen pronounced a very partial and 
unfair charge to the jury. The result was that the jury 
brought in a verdict against Cobbett of $5000 damages, 
which Slim was immediately raised and paid by his friends 
in the United States and Canada, who, no doubt, rightly - 
considered the verdict as having been secured more by 
political than judicial arguments. His great enemy, 
Judge McKean, was shortly afterward elected Governor 
of Pennsylvania, and Cobbett, having rashly declared 
that in the event of such a result he would rethe entirely 
from the State, was as good as his word, and immediately 
moved to New York. Here he renewed his bookselling 
business and continued to publish his Gazette ; but finding 
himself among enthe strangers, and separated from the 
friends he had made in Philadelphia, he felt that his posi- 
tion was an isolated, and, as a Royalist, somewhat anom- 
alous one, so he began to cast his eyes toward England 
as the country where his talents would be better appre- 
ciated and his hfe rendered more comfortable than in 
America. After writing and publishing a pamphlet en- 
titled "The Rushlight," exposing the whole Rush affau-, 
and after publishing in the Philadelphia papers a fare- 



Jjeyal Troubles. 6J5 

well addxess to the Americans — ^in which he declared that 
though no man had so many and such malignant foes, 
few ever had more sincere and faithful friends — he set 
sail for England, on the 1st of June, 1800. 

"Wlien I began my opposition to French principles 
and French influence in America," he wrote in 1801, in a 
letter addi'essed to Lord Hawkesbury, "even my coun- 
trymen called on me to desist, tellmg me that I stood 
alone ; but I stood long enough to find myself in a ma- 
jority. I stood long enough to hear p« ira exchanged 
for God save the King. I stood long enough to see the 
people of Philadelphia — who had threatened to miu'der 
me because I openly exhibited at my window a picture of 
Lord Howe's victory over the French — I stood long 
enough to see these very people make a public celebra- 
tion of Lord Nelson's victory of the Nile. Nay, my lord, 
I stood long enough to see the time when I was the only 
writer in the country who dared to stand forward in be- 
half of a body of injured and unfortunate Frenchmen, 
who finally owed to me alone their deliverance from ruin 
and perhaps from death." "From the summer of 1794 
to the year 1800," he says in his first letter to Mr. Pitt, 
" there were published from my pen about twenty differ- 
ent pamphlets, the whole number of the impressions of 
which amounted to more than half a yiiillion of copies. 
Dui-ing the three last years a daily paper, surpassing in 
extent of numbers any one ever known in America, was 
the vehicle of my efforts ; and, in the year 1800, I might 
safely have asserted that there was not, in the whole 
country, one single family in which some part or other of 
my wi'itings had not been read, and m which, generally 
speaking, they had not produced some degree of effect 
favorable to the interests of my country." 



64 Life of William Cobbett. 



PART II. 

From Cobbett's Keturn to England till His 
Release from Newgate. 

CHAPTER I. 

WHY COBBETT ACTED AS HE DID IN AMERICA. RECEPTION BY 

THE HON. MR. WINDHAM. 

CoBBETT now once more set foot on his native land, 
that land whose king and whose government he had so 
bravely defended for eight years, single handed, against 
all the democracy of America, and whose govenunent he 
had held up as an example to all the world. Did he find 
everything as lovely as he had anticipated? Was every- 
thing in that government as excellent as he had proclaimed 
it to be? Unhappily the date of Cobbett's retui-n was un- 
fortunate; for the years in which he lived in England, 
the first thii'ty-five years of this centmy, were among the 
darkest in the history of that country. The government 
was not simply unprogressive, but retrogressive ; liberal 
ideas were dreaded as revolutionary, and consequently 
ruinous; everybody sighed for "the good old times," 
and the jDCople endured perhaps more misery and mis- 
government than in any other period of their history. 

Some recollection of the Court-mai'tial affair, not yet 
entirely effaced, might indeed still have haunted his 
mind, and prepared him to find a state of things not en- 
tirely perfect. Indeed, one might ask, how came he, after 
such a near view of the corruptions of that government, 
how came he to think so much of it, to become such a 



117^2/ Oohhett Acted as he T)id in America. 65 

zealous defender of it"? He came to it gradually; by 
discussions with his scholars and others ; by seeing many 
of the impei-fections of the American system; by his 
innate love of his native country ; for we have seen that 
he came here with rejiublican sympathies and a desii-e to 
serve the Eepublic. In a foreign country, among those 
who were constantly reviling the land of his birth and its 
rulers, his love of that land revived, rose, increased, and 
possessed him to such a degree that it blmded him to all 
her faults and imperfections, and caused him to exclaim 
with Cowper: 

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still, 
My country!" 

"What, for instance," he says, in his third letter to Mr. 
Pitt, "induced me, when so far from my country, volun- 
tarily to devote myself to her cause? Her commerce"? 
I neither knew nor cared anything about it. Her funds ? 
I was so happy as hardly to understand the meaning 
of the word. Her lands? I could, alas! lay claim to 
nothing but the graves of my parents. "What, then, was 
the stimulus'? What was I proud of? It was the name 
and fame of England. Her laws, her liberties, her justice, 
her might ; all the qualities and circumstances that had 
given her renown in the world ; but, above all, her deeds 
in arms, her military glory." 

"When I began writing in America," he says in his New 
Yeai-'s Gift to Old George Rose, "the country raged 
mth attacks on Pitt and on England. I was an English- 
man, and following that impulse which was so natm-al to 
my spirit and my age, under such cii'cumstances, I took 
the part of my country, without laiowing much, and 
indeed without caring much, about the grounds of her wai* 
against the people of Erance. I had read Httle at the 
age of twenty-eight, and I had no experience in such 
matters. ... I knew that I was an Englishman, and 



66 Life of 'William Oohhett. 

hearing my country attacked, I became her defender 
through thick and thin, always confounding the govern- 
me)it of my country with my country itself^ These, 
therefore, were natural feelings, for which no right-feeling 
American can blame him. 

Among the friends and admirers in England whom 
Cobbett had gained by his writings in America, was the 
well-known statesman, the Right Honorable "William 
Windham, minister in the Pitt and Grenville administra- 
tions, a gentleman of such noble character that Macaulay 
speaks of him as "the ingenious, the chivabous, the 
high-souled "Windham." This gentleman gave Cobbett a 
very cordial reception, and at a dinner given in his honor 
presented him to "William Pitt, the celebrated prime 
minister, whose policy Cobbett had so steadily and vigor- 
ously defended while ip America. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PITT DINNER-PAETY. 

As much has been written about this dinner; as it has 
been questioned by several writers whether Pitt was 
really present at it ; as it has been asserted that Pitt was 
too haughty to meet "Windliam's peasant ^roi5^(/^ on such 
familiar terms ; and as Cobbett's subsequent ojDinions of 
and conduct toward Pitt have been attributed to that min- 
ister's refusal to meet him at that dinner-party, I must first 
quote the various passages in which Cobbett himself 
speaks of it and of what occiu'red there, before showing 
that there was no reason whatever for the suspicion 
which has been cast on Cobbett's statements regarding it, 
and that we have now positive proof of the correctness 
of those statements. 



The Pitt Dinner- Party. 67 

In bis letter to the people of Hampshire, written in 
1809, concerning the Court-martial affair, he says : 

" On my retm-n from America, having stopped at Hal- 
ifax in Nova Scotia, the Duke of Kent, who requested to 
see me, talked to me about my regiment and about all its 
affairs. He must have known all about the Court-martial. 
Mx. "Windham and Mi\ Torke have been, since my return, 
and the former was before. Secretaries at War/ they had 
the whole history in their office ; and yet nobody in the 
country 'has ever spoken, and, I believe, thought better of 
me than Mr. Windham and Mr. Torke have. I remem- 
ber that in dining with Mi-. Pitt at Mi'. Windham's in 
August, 1800, the former asked me about Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald. We talked about him a good deal. I gave 
the company present (of which Mr. Canning was one) an 
account of his conduct while in the regiment ; I spoke in 
very high terms of his zeal for the service, and I told Mi". 
Pitt that Lord Edward was the only sober and the only 
honest officer I had ever known in the army.* I did 

* Of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who procured Cobbett's dis- 
charge, from the army, and wliom he cited as one of his wit- 
nesses in tlie Court-martial affair, Mr. Tliomas Moore, the poet, 
has written a Life. Altliough it is little more tlian a collection of 
the 3'oung nobleman's letters, and some of those of his kinsfolk, 
witli a few introductory remarks by tlie biograplier, tlie book is 
very interesting. Fitzgerald was a nobleman by nature as well as 
by rank — one of the most gentle-hearted men that ever breathed. 
Procuring at seventeen years of age a lieutenancy in the army 
(1781), he went with his regiment to America, and after a 
little active service under Lord Rawdon in South Carolina, where 
he was wounded in a skirmish with the Americans, he was sent 
home at the conclusion of peace, 1782. After studying for some 
time at Woolwich, and then travelling in Spain and Portugal, he 
rejoined his regiment at St. John, N. B., whence he wrote highly 
interesting letters home to his mother and others, and where he 
seems to have first imbibed republican principles. He had pre- 
viously taken his seat in the Irish Parliament as the nominee of 
his uncle, the Duke of Leinster, and on liis return to England in 



68 Life of William Cohbett. 

this for the express purpose of leading liim on to 
talk about the Court-martial — ^but it was avoided. In 
fact, they all knew that what I had complained of was 
true, and that I had been baffled in my attempt to obtain 
justice, only because I had neither money nor friends." 

In his second letter to the people of Hampshire, writ- 
ten in the same year, this passage occurs: "Upon my 
return from America, then* offers [of support from the 
government] were renewed, but again rejected. I re- 
ceived marks of approbation for these writings from all 
the men then in power. I dined at Mr. Windham's with 
Pitt, which I then thought a very great honor; and 
really, when Mr. Canning looks back to the time when I 
dined at his house in Putney, and when he paid me so 
many just compliments for my exertions in my country's 
cause, I can hardly think that he must not view with 
some degree of shame these attempts [to defame him] on 
the part of persons who are publicly paid to write under 
his particular patronage." 

"Wliile answering the assertions of his enemies "that 
the government did not receive and reward him agree- 
ably to his deserts, and that therefore he tui-ned against 
it," he says, in his letter entitled, A New Year's Gift to 
Old George Rose, written in 1817: "You, George, know 
this to be false. The facts were these : Very soon after my 

1791 was about to be entrusted by Pitt with the command of an 
expedition against Cadiz, when he found tliat liis uncle had, in his 
absence, again procured him a seat in the Iriali Parliament, so 
that he was obliged to decline Pitt's offer and stand by his uncle. 
In Parliament he sided with the liberal members, and endeavored 
to procure a reform of abuses in Ireland; but, failing in all 
attempts at reform, he was induced to join the revolutionary 
organization called the United Brotherhood of Ireland, who made 
him their military leader. After having nearly succeeded in get- 
ting everything ready for beginning the rebellion hy the capture 
of Dublin, he was betrayed by some of his accomplices, wounded 
by his captors, and died of his wounds in a dungeon, 1798. 



Tnc Pitt Dliiaer- Parti/. B9 

anival I was invited to dine at Mr. Windham's, Avbo was 
then Secretaiy at War, and did dine in company of Pitt, 
Avho was very poHte to me, and whose manners I very 
much admired. At this diimer, besides the brave and 
lionest (thovigh misguided) host, were Mr. Canning, fe. 
Frere, IVIi-. George ElHs, and some others, whom I do not 
now recollect. I was never presumptuous in my life, and 
I regarded this as a great act of condescension on the 
part of Ml-. AVuidham, and more especially on the pai't of 
]Mi\ Pitt, of whose talents and integrity I had then the 
highest possible opinion; for I, at that time, had no 
idea of such things as Bank bubbles and Lord Melville's 
accounts." 

The next reference to this dinner-party is in his 
" Yeai''s Residence in America," under date of January 15, 
1819. The passage is so strikmgly interesting and such 
a delightful bit of autobiography, that the reader will 
excuse me for giving it entire : "■ The question put to me 
eagerly by everyone in Philadelphia is, ' Don't you think 
the city gi-eatly imjproved'?' They seem to me to con- 
found augmentation with improvement. It always was a 
• fine city, since I first knew it ; and it is very greatly aug- 
mented. It has, I believe, nearly doubled its extent and 
number of houses since the year 1799. But, after being 
for so long a time familiar with London, every other 
place ajjpears little. After being within a few hundred 
yards of Westminster Hall and the Abbey Church, and the 
Bridge, and looking from my own windows into St. 
James's Park, all other buildings and spots appeal* mean 
and msignificant. I went to-day to see the house I for- 
merly occupied [in Philadelphia]. How small! It is 
always thus : the words large and small are carried about 
with us hi oui* minds, and we forget real dimensions. 
The idea, such as it teas received, remains dui'ing our 
absence from the object. When I returned to England 
in 1800, after an absence from the coiuitry parts of six- 



70 Life of William Gobbett. 

teen years,* the trees, the hedges, even the paxks and 
woods, seemed so small ! It made me laugh to hear little 
gutters that I could jump over called rivers. The 
Thames was but a creek ! But when, about a month after 
my arrival in London, I went to Farnham, the place of 
my birth, what was my surprise ! Everything was become 
so pitifully small ! I had to cross, in my post-chaise, the 
long and dreary heath of Bagshot ; then, at the end of it, 
to mount a hill called Hungry Hill ; and from that hill I 
knew I should look down into the beautiful and fertile 
vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impai.ence, 
mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my 
childliood; for I had learnt before of the death of my 
father and mother. There is a hill, not far from the 
town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat, 
m the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir- 
trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of 
crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the 
neighborhood. It served as the superlative degree of 
height. 'As high as Crooksbury Hill' meant with us the 
utmost degree of height. Therefore, the first object my 
eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my eyes! 
Literally speaking, I for a moment thought the famous 
hill removed, and a little heap put in its stead ; for I had 
seen in New Brunswick a single rock, or hill of solid rock, 

* Which disposes of a long story of Huish's, quoted by 
Watson, that when Cobbett left London, just before the meeting 
of the Court-martial, he went to his father's house at Farnham; 
and that the accused oflScers, desirous of prosecuting him on 
hearing of his whereabouts, sent an old soldier, disguised as a 
beggar, after him, and that he found him here ; but that Cobbett, 
recognizing the soldier, and accusing him of desertion from the 
army, thus found time to escape to France. Where do these fic- 
tions originate? Furthermore, if this house in Philadelphia, in 
whicli he once resided, was comparatively so small, is it likely 
that Paul Hedgehog's story is true, that Cobbett paid a rent oi 
a year for it ? 



The ritt Dinner-. Party. 71 

ten •times as big, and foui* or five times as high. The 
jiost-boj'^, going down the hill, and not a bad road, whisked 
me in a few minutes to the Bush Imi, from the garden of 
Avhich I could see the prodigious sand-hill where I had 
begun my gardening works. What a nothing ! But now 
came rushing into my mind, all at once, my pretty little 
garden, my little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, 
my pretty pigeons that I used to feed out of my hands, 
the last kind words and tears of my gentle and tender- 
heai'ted and afi'ectionate mother ! I hastened back into the 
room. If I had looked a moment longer I should have 
di'opped. Wlien I came to reflect, what a change ! What 
scenes I had gone through ! How altered my state ! I 
had dined the day before at the Secretary of State's, in 
company with Mi'. Pitt, and had been waited upon by 
men in gaudy liveries ! I had nobody to assist me in the 
Avorld; no teacher of any sort. Nobody to shelter me 
from the consequences of bad, and no one to counsel me 
to good behavior. I felt j^roud. The distinctions of rank, 
bu'th, and wealth, all became nothing in my eyes ; and 
from that moment (less than a month after my arrival in 
England), I resolved never to bend before them." 

There is another incident which Cobbett's sons say they 
have heai'd their father mention as having taken place at 
this dinner-party. When the excitement in this country 
about the proposed Jay treaty was at its height, England 
bemg then at war with France, a French vessel, bearing 
dispatches from the French minister at Philadelphia, was 
captm-ed m the Enghsh Channel ; aud the French captain, ' 
seeing that all was lost, seized his dispatches and tlrrew 
them into the sea. This was observed by the captain of 
the English vessel, and he immediately leaped into the 
sea and rescued them. These dispatches revealed the 
treachery of Randolph, Washington's Secretary of State, 
toward his own government, and were sent by the British 
government to the President of the United States. The 



72 Life of William Cohhett. 

discovery put a powerful weapon into the hands of the 
friends of the treaty, which was effectively used by Cob- 
bett in his " New Year's Gift to the Democrats," which 
greatly aided in securing the ratification of the treaty. 
On Cobbett suggesting to Mr. Pitt the propriety of doing 
something for the officer who had rendered such impor- 
tant service in saving the dispatches, " he turned round to 
Ml'. Windham," said Cobbett, " and inquired if that man 
had received no reward." 

Now, after carefully reading all these passages, written 
in different years and in different places, with their cir- 
cumstantial details of time and place and persons, with 
such a clear statement of the various subjects talked of; 
after carefully considering all these passages, will any one 
deny that they bear the impress of truth on the face of 
them"? It is a remarkable fact that there ssems never to 
have been any doubt expressed, during Cobbett" s lifetime, 
as to the correctness of these statements. Cobbett's 
books, pamphlets, and periodicals were read by tens of 
thousands; indeed, his Eegister, in which two of these 
passages appeared, was one of the most widely read and 
most sharply criticised papers in England ; yet nobody 
seems to have doubted his statements at the time he 
wrote and published them. And he mentions living wit- 
nesses. Canning, who lived until 1827, and who would 
have been only too glad, at the time these statements 
were made, to have found such a good opportunity t;) 
destroy his influence by denying his veracity, never at- 
tempted anything of the kind. Messrs. Ellis and Frerc 
are Avell-known personages ; both friends of Canning, and, 
like Canning himself, both contributors to newspapers. 
The latter is the Eight Hon. John Hookham Frere, 
scholar, humorist, and diplomatist. Canning's school-fellow 
and fellow-contributor to the celebrated newspaper, the 
Anti-Jacobin. Mr. Frere lived till 1846 ; and surely, if 
there were no truth in the various statements of Cob- 



T)ie Pitt THuner- Party. 73 

bett's concerning the meeting with Mi-. Pitt, he would be 
hkely to have said so. The former is George EUis, 
F.K.S., F.S.A., author of " Specimens of Early Enghsh 
Poetiy," and " Specimens of Early English Romance ; " 
also a friend of Canning and Frere, and a contributor 
to the Antl-Jacohin. 

Fui'ther, there intervened neai'ly four years between 
the date of this dinner and Cobbett's falling off from Pitt. 
Is it probable that Cobbett would have gone on support- 
ing and defending Pitt for four years, after that gentle- 
man showed such small esteem for him as to refuse to 
dine in his company 1 Cobbett was by no means such a 
long-suifering, patient, and meek individual. 

]\Ii\ Watson says : " Cobbett's sons are surely justified 
in considering these as sufficient testimonies that Pitt was 
not too haughty to meet theii- father at Windham's table. 
Yet it is the duty of the biographer to remark that there 
is no attestation to the fact of the meeting but Cohbetfs 
oicjiy This observation, so smooth and impartial-looking, 
is a deadly thrust at the character of Cobbett; it cuts 
away by the roots all confidence in him ; for it implies 
that his word, his attestation is of no value. And yet 
there is an attestation, an unimpeachable attestation, be- 
sides Cobbett's own, to the fact of the meeting mth Pitt 
on the occasion in question ; and that is the record of no 
less a personage than Mi*. Windham himself. In that 
gentleman's diary, under date August 7, 1800, there ap- 
pears the following entry: " Council dinner : Hammond, 
Canning, Frere, Malone, Cobbett, alias ' Peter Porcupine,' 
whom I saw for the first time ; Pitt, and George Ellis ; 
Canning's cousin."* 

"WTiat a fortunate thing it is that Mr. Windham kept a 
diai-y ! Let no man condemn diaries any more, for they 
iU'e often emmently useful. 

♦Diary of the Hon. Willium WiiuUiam (Longmans, 18<)()), p. 
4;}0. Quotod by Mr. E. Smith. 
4 



74 . Life of William Oohbett. 

So firmly rooted did this falsehood become about Pitt 
refusing to meet Cobbett at the dinner-party, that not 
only Mi\ Watson, but nearly all his other biographers, 
nearly all the encyclopedia and magazine writers, make 
the same statement, and suppose that Cobbett fell away 
from Pitt because the latter refused to meet him on this 
occasion ! It is such a convenient and easy explanation 
of his conduct ! Mx. "Watson's insinuation is so peculiarly 
insidious and subtle, that it pierces like a poniard-thrust ; 
stabs Cobbett through and through; kills at one blow. 
However, the reader will not, after this, I trust, be sur- 
prised at any attempt this writer makes to injure his char- 
acter. 

And here I must dispose of another accusation of this 
sort, previously mentioned. On no better grounds, do 
Mr. Watson and a j)i*evious biographer of Cobbett's, Mi*. 
Huish, throw doubt on the genuineness of Jefferson's let- 
ter to Cobbett, in answer to his letter of recommendation 
from Mr. Adams. They profess incredulity in his having 
received any letter of recommendation from Mi'. Adams, 
Ambassador at Xhe Hague, because Cobbett had never, as 
they say, been at the Hague, and did not explain how he 
came to receive this letter from Mi-. Adams. Cobbett says 
he was recommended to Mr. Adams by a Mr. Short, and 
it seems from Jefferson's letter to Cobbett, that he was 
well acquainted with Mr. Short.* Mr. Watson sums the 
matter up by saying, "So the matter must rest; there 
being no proof of the letter to Jefferson having existed, 
or the letter from Jefferson being genuine, but Cobbett's 
own assertion." 

To have concocted this story of the letter of recom- 
mendation from Mr. Adams, and forged the reply of Mr. 

*Tliis is, no doubt, the Mr. Wm. Short that figures in Jeffer- 
son's writings as one of his correspondents. Jefferson's "Writ- 
ings," vii., p. 390. 



Iloro the Scales were Taken from his Eyes. 75 

Jefterson, and to have published both the story and the 
letter of recommendation, in the very city in which 
resided Jefferson himself, the chief of the pai'ty against 
which Cobbett was so notoriously fighting, and in which 
both Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams had so many friends 
and acquaintances, — to have done this without being 
fovmd out, there and then, seems not only improbable, 
but impossible. Besides, it argues a degree of folly, as 
well as of villainy, on the part of Cobbett, of which 
nothing in his career justifies us in believing him 
guilty ; on the contrai'y, his whole life forbids us to sup- 
pose him capable of such contemptible baseness. If these 
biographers had shown that Mi'. Adams or Mi'. Jefferson, 
or any of theii* friends, had denied the genuineness of 
these letters, it would have settled the matter; there 
would be nothing more to be said about it ; but to insinu- 
ate, many years after Cobbett's death, because he did not 
explain, like a man under cross-examination, how he came 
by a certain letter, that its authenticity is doubtful, is, in 
my opinion, exceedingly mean and unfair dealing. But it 
is of a piece with the rest of Mi'. Watson's* assertions. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW THE SCALES WEKE TAKEN FROM HIS EYES. 

Here is the whole story, of what he found on his retui'ii 
to England, and of how he became acquainted with the real 
inwai'dness of things— a perfectly "round unvarnished tale,'' 
told by Cobbett many years afterwards ; illustrating, in a 
graphic manner, not only Cobbett's thoroughly independ- 
ent and honorable conduct, but the pecuHarly rotten state 
of affau's under the Pitt aduiiuistration : 

" At the time of my return, the great government writ- 



76 Life of WllUaui Cobbett. 

ers and political agents were John Reeves, who had been 
chairman of the Loyal Association against Republicans 
and Levellers ; John Bowles ; John Gifford ; William 
Gifford; Sir Frederick Morton Eden, Bart. ; the Reverend 
Mr. Ireland, now Dean of Westminster ; the Rever- 
end John Brand ; the Reverend Herbert Marsh, now 
Bishop of Peterborough ; Mallet du Pan ; Sir Francis 
d'lvernois ; and Nicholas V^nsittart. These men were 
all pamphlet- writers, supporting Pitt and the war thi'ough 
thick and thin. They, looking upon me as a fellow- 
laborer, had all sent their pamphlets to me at Phila- 
delphia ; and all of them, except Marsh, Vansittart, and 
the two Frenchmen, had written to me laudatory let- 
ters. All but the parsons called themselves 'Squires on 
the title-pages of then- pamphlets. Look at me now ! I 
had been bred up with a smock-frock upon my back ; that 
frock I had exchanged for a soldier's coat ; I had been out 
of England almost the whole of my time from the age of 
twenty. We used to give in those times the name of 
'Squire to none but gentlemen of great landed estates, 
keeping their Carriages, hounds, and so forth ; look at me, 
then, in whose mind my boyish idea of a 'Squire had been 
carried about the world with me ; look at me, I say, with 
letters from four 'Squires and four Reverends on my table ; 
and wonder not that my head was half turned! Only 
think of me (who, only about twelve years before, was 
clumpmg about with hob-nailed shoes on my feet, and with 
a Smock-frock on my back), being in literary correspond- 
ence with four 'Squires, tw^o Reverends, and a Baronet ! 
Look at me, and wonder that I did not lose my senses ! 
And if I had remamed in America, God knows what might 
have happened. 

"Luckily, I came to England, and that steadied my 
head pretty quickly. To my utter astonishment and con- 
fusion, I found all my 'Squires and Reverends, and my 
Baronet, too, all, in one way or another, dependent on 



IIovi the Scales were T(il-e», froiti his Eyes. 77 

the goveiiiment, and, oitt of the public 2^^'^'ii'se, profiting 
from their pamphlets ! John Reeves, Esquire, who was 
n baiTister, but never practiced, I found joint patentee of 
the office of King's l^rintcr — a sinecm-e, worth, to him, 
about £4,000 a year, which he had got for thirty years, 
just then begxin. John Bowles, Esquike, also a briefless 
baiTister, I found a Commissioner of Dutch Property. 
The public will recollect the emoluments of that ofifi.ce, as 
exposed in 1809. John Gifitbrd, Esquire, I found a Police 
Magistrate, with a pension of £300 a year besides. 
WilKam Gifford, Esquire, I found shai'ing the profit of 
Canning's Anti-Jacobin newspaper (set up and paid for 
by the Treasui-y), and with a sinecure of £329 a year 
besides. My Baroxet I found with rent-free apai'tments 
in Hampton Coui't Palace, and with what else I have for- 
gotten. My Reverend John Brand I foiiiid with the hv- 
ing of St. George, Southwai'k, given him by Lord Lough- 
borough (then Chancellor), he having already a living in 
Sufifolk. My Reverend L-eland I found with the living of 
Croydon, or the expectancy of it, and also found that 
he was looking steadily at old Jjord lAverpool. The 
Reverend Herbert Marsh I foimd a pension-hunter, and 
he soon succeeded to the tune of £514 a year. Mallett 
du Pau I foimd dead ; but I found that he had been a 
pensioner, and I foimd his widow a pensioner, and his son 
in one of the public offices. And Nicholas Vansittart, 
Esquire, who had A^Titten a pamphlet to prove that the 
war had emiched the nation, I found, O God ! a Co'inmis- 
sioner of Scotch Herrings ! Hey, dear ! as the Lanca- 
slm-e men say, I thought it would break my heart ! 

" Of all these men, John Reeves and WiUiam Gifford 
were the only ones of talent ; the former a really learned 
lawyer, and, politics aside, as good a man as ever lived — 
a clever man ; a head as cleai* as spring- water ; considerate, 
mild, humane ; made by nature to be an English judge. 
I did not break with him on account of politics. "SVe said 



7S Life of Wiliiani Cohhett. 

nothing about them for years. I always had the greatest 
regard for him ; and there he now is in the grave, leaving, 
the newspapers say, tioo hundred thousand pmmds, with- 
out hardly a soul knowing there ever was such a man! 
The fate of "William Gifford was much about the same: 
both lived and died bachelors; both left large sums of 
money; both spent theii* lives in upholding measures 
which, in their hearts, they abhorred, and in eulogizing 
men whom, in their hearts, they despised; and, in spite 
of their Hterary labors, the only chance that they have of 
being remembered, for even ten years to come, is this 
notice of them from a pen that they both most anxiously 
wished to silence many years ago. Among the first things 
that Eeeves ever said to me was : ' I tell you what, Cob- 
bett, we have only two ways here ; we must either kiss — 
or kick them : and you must make your choice at once !' 
I resolved to kick. 

" William Gifford had more asperity in his temper, and 
was less resigned. He despised Pitt and Canning, and 
the whole crew; but he loved ease, was timid; he was 
their slave all his life, and all his life had to endure a con- 
flict between his pecuniary interest and his conscience. 

"As to the rest of my 'Squires and other dignified 
pamphleteers, they were a low, talentless, place-and-pen- 
sion-hunting crew ; and I was so disgusted with the dis- 
coveries I had made, that I trembled at the thought of 
falling into the ranks with them. Love of ease was liot 
in me ; the very idea of becoming rich had never entered 
my mind; and my hoiror at the thought of selling my 
talents for money, and of plundering the couiatry with 
the help of the means that God had given me wherewith 
to assist in supporting its character, filled me with horror 
not to be expressed." 

Perhaj)s they have " changed all that " in England by 
this time ; but, unhappily, this state of things is common 
enough here now. We have fallen upon evil days here in 



I Tow the iScaJei^ were Taken from his J^yes. 79 

America. Wliat yoimg American who lias supported the 
government by tongue or pen during a campaign or an ad- 
mmistration Avould refuse to be rewarded by a good fat 
office, if ofi'ered to him*? We have, in this country, come 
to look upon this thing as something legitimate ; it is the 
chief thing many people aim at, nowadays, when they 
"vsTite on political matters; yet such a reward, is, never- 
theless, nothing but unqualified corruption. .One shovdd 
no more be rewai'ded for doing his duty, for aiding his 
country by tongue or pen, than he should be rewai'ded 
for telKng the truth ; and a political party, in whose prin- 
cij^les and policy one believes, should be defended or sup- 
ported without hope of reward. One must write for 
measiu-es, not money ; for principles, not pay. Let every 
young American, therefore, take this to heart, and beware 
of allowing himself to be bought by a pocketful of Uncle 
Sam's silver and gold. Faust sold his soul to the devil 
for a good thue of twenty yeai's ; oui- bribed political writer 
sells his for one of four years ! The only difference be- 
tween this thing in England and in this country is one of 
degree : in England the appointment lasts for life, here 
only till some other " willing slave " must be rewarded. 

However, in this matter there is a distinction to be 
observed. "When- a man is selected on account of the 
ability displayed in some Hterary work, to fill an import- 
ant office in the government of his country, to the duties 
of which he is to give his whole time and attention, and 
for which he is peculiarly fitted, bribery is out of the 
question. But in cases such as those Cobbett mentions, 
where the offices given were sinecures, it was bribery 
pm-e and simple. They were offices in which there were 
no duties to be pei-formed ; offices which the inciunbents 
filled without at all interfering with their ordinaiy voca- 
tions; offices from which they derived salaries without 
doing any or haixlly any work, or the duties of which 
they could easily consign to an underling for one tenth 



80 Life of William Cobbett. 

of the salary attached to them. This is corruption in 
the receivers and bribery in the givers; it is taking 
money without giving any proper equivalent for it ; it is 
taking money to which one has no just claim; and, in 
fact, it is just the same as stealing money. 

In England it is a common thing for yovmg men of 
talent to make themselves known to the powers that be by 
some literary production ; it is a means of showing what 
they can do, and the political leaders, who are always on 
the lookout for young men of ability, come forward and 
offer them positions in the government service. The 
young writers do not seek the office; the office seeks 
them, and when their principles harmonize with the 
policy pui-sued and the objects aimed at by the govern- 
ment, it is right for them to accept the office. When 
Macaulay first showed the world his wondrous powers by 
his essay on Milton, he, like Byron, "woke up one 
morning and found himself famous ;" and it was not long 
l">efore he was offered, by the party whose principles he 
so finely defended, a seat in Parliament, and subse- 
quently a place in the ministry — and so he went on. 
This, you see, is an entu'ely different thing ; it is the re- 
ward of talent and ability in harmony with principle. 
Where corruption lies is in the receiving of an office with 
little or nothing to do, and the whole object of which is 
to put money in the hands of the incumbent and thus 
make a pensioner of him — "a slave of state.'" These 
amiable colleagues of Cobbett's were all of them slaves 
of state, and of course they came to hate him because he 
also would not become one. It was with reference to 
them that he was so fond of quoting Lafontaine's fable 
of the "Wolf and the Dog." The dog, who is a fine fat 
fellow, meets a lean and hungry wolf, and invites him to 
come and live with him at his home, where there is an 
abundance of fine fat things to be got to eat. The wolf 
agrees to go home with the dog ; they set off together ; 



^'■Porcupiiie'''' Mevived. - 81 

but on the way, the Avolf notices a mark on the neck of 
the dog, and inquii-es what it is. " Oh, that is only the 
mark of the chain with which my master ties me up some- 
times," said the dog. " Ties you up ! " exclaimed the 
wolf; "ties you up! Oh, that wont suit me; I would 
rather, a thousand times, endui'e my hunger, with liberty, 
than be tied up with the finest food in the world ! " 

Let every yotmg man engrave this fable on the tablets 
of his memory. It applies in more ways than one; to 
more people than politicians. Every clerk, for instance, 
who accepts presents from the customers of his employer, 
becomes the slave of those customers, and the mark of 
the chain becomes visible, in his featui'es, if not on his 
neck. Keep yourself free from such things, and you will 
have a manly and independent ah* and feeling ; become a 
bribe-taker, and you will feel and act hke a fawning, 
cringing, creeping cui'. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

"porcupine" revived. THE HAWKESBURY AND ADDINGTON 

LETTERS. 

In his letter to Mr. Rose, he tells us that it was while 
dining with Mr. Hammond (then Under Secretary of 
State for the Foreign Department, in company with Su* 
William Scott and Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards Lord 
Liverpool), that he was offered, as a gift, the proprietor- 
ship of one of two government papers, IVie True Briton 
and The Sicn. This offer he refused, being convinced, as 
he said to Mi*. Hammond, that " by keeping himself 
wholly free, and relying upon his own means, he should 
be able to give the government much more efficient sup- 
port than if any species of dependence could be traced to 
him." To which Mr, Hammond replied, "Well, I must 



82 Life of William Cobbett. 

say that I think you take the honorable course, and I most 
sincerely wish it ^uay albo be the profitable one." " Now, 
Ml'. Hammond is ahve," says Cobbett, " and I am sure, if 
appealed to, will not deny that what I have stated is 
true;" otherwise I have no doubt Mi-. Watson would have 
cast suspicion upon Cobbett's assertion in this case, too. 

"When he began his opj)Osition to Mr. Pitt in 1804, and 
one of these very papers. The True Briton, dared to 
style him an Ainerican and a traitor, Cobbett very 
neatly replied, " Certaui I am that I never gave any 
provocation, except that of refusing to become brother 
slave ; a refusal which arose not only from my dislike for 
the situation itself, but from a conviction, which has 
since been fully confirmed by observation, that the pen of 
a slave seldom produces effect." He did not always, how- 
ever, regard such attacks with equal coolness and good 
sense ; for, on one occasion, being charged by one of the 
editors of these papers with sedition, and with instigating 
the -army and navy to mutiny, he marched straight to the 
office of the offender, and " in less than three horu's after 
the libel was published the libeller received personal chas- 
tisement in the very apartment where he had fabricated 
the libel." So tells IVIr. Edward Smith; a-'=\ the story 
simply shows how profoundly some accusations did affect 
him. Of one thing we may be sure: that in this eii- 
coumter, as in that with Bache, he, like a true Englishman, 
used his fists, and not the cowardly Spanish or Italian 
poniard, or the equally cowardly American pistol. 

Cobbett established, therefore, a paper of his own, a 
daily pajDer, which he called by the name he had already 
made famous. The Porcupine, and in which he maintained 
monarchical principles, and uttered warnings against the 
doctrines of democrats and republicans. So it is pretty 
plain that his interview with Pitt had only increased his 
ardor for monarchy and its accompaniments. In this 
enterprise, however, he did not succeed. There is prob- 



'■'■Porcvplne'''' Revived. 83 

ably no undertaking whatever that is more terribly 
exacting, more uni-elenting in its demands, more arduous 
and difficult in its duties, than the conducting of a daily 
newspaper. The requirements of every sort are bormd- 
less ; the demands on the editor ceaseless and unlimited. 
" He who has been the proprietor of a daily jpaper for 
only one month," he says, " wants no Romish priest to 
describe to him the torments of piu-gatory." Cobbett, no 
doubt, took the greater part of the burden on his own 
shoulders ; and although he had been assured that m 
London talent was so plentiful and assistance so cheap 
that the undertaking would not be nearly so difficult as 
in America, he found the requirements, nay, the necessi- 
ties of a daily paper in London tenfold those of one in 
Philadelphia. There were so many more interests and 
classes to be satisfied, so many more matters to be 
attended to, in order to keep up with his rivals, that the 
labor was far greater than he had had in Philadelphia, 
and more than he was able to endure ; so that he soon got 
tu'ed of it, and gave it up. 

The palmer was merged into The True Briton. He 
himself afterwards attributed his failure to his refusal to 
use corrupt'!^' "Bans to obtain money. He says in the same 
letter to Mr. Rose: "I could not sell paragraphs. I 
could not throw out hmts against a man's or woman's 
reputation in order to bring the party forward to pay me 
for silence. I could do none of those mean and infamous 
things by which the daily press, for the greater part, was 
supported, and which enabled the proprietors to ride in 
chaiiots, while then- underlings were actually venduag lies 
by the line and inch." He also refused to accept the 
advertisements of quack doctors, though he was told 
that, by so doing, he would lose' five hundi'ed pounds a 
year. " Li this resolution he may have been influenced 
by his recollection of what he had sufi'ered from the 
quack Rush," says Mr. Watson, who could not conceive 



84 L\f^ of William Cohbett. 

of Cobbett's acting from any better motive than hatred 
of an old enemy. It will, perhaps, occur to the reader's 
own mind, that the man who acted thus with reference 
to so large a sum of money, which might have been 
easily acquu-ed, and who refused the government offer 
of a whole newspaper as a gift, " with printing-machines 
and type ready-furnished," is not exactly the sort of man to 
give up the prosecution of thieves for the sake of a bribe, 
or to forge letters of recommendation in order to secure 
a government situation. 

Cobbett now established in London, in partnership with 
an Englishman named Morgan, whom he had known in 
Philadelphia, a bookselling and publishing business. " In 
this shop," say his sons, " he might have made what for- 
tune he pleased ; for never was man more favorably cu'- 
cvunstanced. He had the choicest connection that a 
tradesman could wish for, and as much of it as would 
have sated the appetite of the most thrifty man." But 
Cobbett's chief object was never the acquisition of wealth ; 
he would rather have a hand in shai^ing his country's 
destinies than in making the finest fortune in England. 
He had been too long accustomed to expressing his 
opinions on public events, to remain contentedly silent 
now ; so when Pitt resigned, which he did on account of 
his disagreement with the king concerning Catholic 
emancipation, Cobbett wrote several letters to the public 
prints endeavoring to show, while still professing great 
regard for Pitt, that the king was right and his minister 
v.-rong ; maintaining that the Catholics would never cease 
to desire concessions until there was nothing left for them 
to ask, and that people who believed that the king was 
doomed to eternal damnation, unless converted to the 
Catholic Church, should never be entrusted with the 
functions of legislators or ministers. Let the reader re- 
member this, when he comes to see what his views were a 
few years later. And when the Treaty of Amiens was 



'■'■Porcupine'''' Revived. 85 

about to be made, lie wrote a number of brilliant letters, 
addressed to Lord Hawkesbury and to the new premier 
Lord Addington, clearly sliowing the one-sidedness of that 
treaty, the great disadvantages which it presented to the 
English nation, and the unmense advantages it secvu'ed to 
the French. These letters are written in such an impres- 
sive style that Mueller, the Swiss historian, speaks of them 
as " the most eloquent vsniting since the time of the two 
great professors of phihppic oratory ; " and a writer in the 
Encycloi^edia Britannica speaks of them as the most 
finished of all Cobbett's writings. Cobbett was right too ; 
for the state of things under that treaty was so unsatis- 
factory that the Enghsh people formd it impossible to 
rest satisfied, and in less than a year war was again de- 
claimed against Bonaparte. It was on account of Cobbett's 
refusal to illuminate his house, on the occasion of the 
celebration of the peace of Amiens, that a London mob, 
led mostly by government employes, attacked and de- 
mohshed his house, for which offense he had " six of the 
villains" arrested, of whom thi-ee were tried, convicted, 
and — fijied a few- pounds ! 

He now republished his hfe of Tom Paine — whom he 
at this time branded with all the opprobrious names which 
his rich vocabulary afforded — and also published an edition 
of the Collected Works of Peter Porcupine, in twelve 
volumes. This work was subscribed for by the King, the 
Prince of Wales, a great number of the higher nobility, 
and many of the leading men of the time. The volumes 
consist mostly of his American controversial writings 
and extracts from Porcupine's Gazette. 

Cobbett now began to be assailed, by vai'ious London 
newspapers, for his obstinacy in refusing to illuminate 
his house ; to which assaults he replied by a satu-e in the 
manner of Swift, the addi-ess of "An Author to Prince 
Posterity," in which he lets the world know the by-no- 
means-flattering opinions of that prince concerning each 



86 Life of William Oobhett. 

of his assailants. He felt, however, that he must have an 
organ wherein he could express his opinions fully, freely, 
and regularly concerning public affairs ; so he began his 
"Weekly Political Kegister," a periodical which, to use 
his own expressive words, " came up like a gram of mus- 
tard-seed, and, like a grain of mustard-seed, spread over 
the whole civilized world;" and which he conducted until 
his death, in 1835. 



CHAPTEK V. 

THE "kegister." HOW NAPOLEON SHOULD BE RECEIVED. 

Though Cobbett's knowledge was limited, too hmited 
for such a position as the editor of a periodical devoted 
to national affairs, he had the essential qualities of a great 
editor: he was indejaendent-minded and large-hearted, 
manly, and fearless in the expression of opinion ; he pos- 
sessed an analytical and searching turn of mind, which, 
combined with matchless powers of expression, rendered 
him more than a match for every antagonist. No man ever 
surpassed him in clearness of statement, in logical analysis 
of the plans and purposes of jjublic men, in skillful detec- 
tion and luminous exposure of theu- weak points, or in 
hearty and powerful commendation of their good ones. 
Beginning in 1801 with three hundred copies, the circula- 
tion of the Register rose in 1803 to over four thousand 
copies (at tenpence a copy), in 1817 to twenty thousand, 
and occasional issues sonietimes ran as high as thirty and 
even fifty thousand copies. Some years later he said it 
brought him an income of £15,000 a year. From this 
time Cobbett became a power in England; fighting, I 
might say — especially after his imprisonment in 1809 — 
against all the world, and all the world against him. The 
grand trait in his character was his constant and entire 



Tlxe ''Register:' 87 

independence of mind ; for lie never counted the cost or 
cai-ed for the consequences when he had once made up 
his mind to pui'sue a certain policy. He continued, in 
fact, to develop that innate love of fight, 'that dare-devil 
fondness for attacking the " big guns " and the " great 
idols " of the day — a characteristic which he no doubt 
inherited from his sea-roving Saxon ancestors — which he 
had so recklessly displayed in America.. 

He began by declaring that he hoped to contribute in 
some degree to the preserving of "those ancient and 
holy institutions, those iinsophisticated morals and uatviral 
manners, that well-tempered love of natural liberty, and 
that just sense of public honor, on the preservation of 
which oui- national happiness and independence so essen- 
tially depend." He mightily aided in rousing the English 
people to active preparation for a vigorous reception of 
th'e French in case of the threatened invasion by Bona- 
parte ; and his articles on the First Consul were so severe 
and trenchant that the French ambassador in London, 
M. Otto, was instructed to request the English Govern- 
ment to have Cobbett prosecuted for libel. The Ministry, 
however, never meddled with him; and he pretty soon 
after (July, 1803) showed his sense of gratitude to the 
government by writing that masterly Address to the 
People of England, entitled " Important Considerations 
for the People of this Kingdom," which is set down as 
one of his best pieces of writing. He showed his country- 
men that the entu-e responsibihty for the war rested with 
Bonaparte ; described the appalling consequences should 
the invading Frenchman be victorious, and pointed out 
how to make a vigorous resistance against him should he 
attempt to invade theu' sacred island. 

I must beg the reader to allow me to quote the first 
and last paragraphs of this admirable paper, irt order to 
show him how clearly and forcibly he could state a case, 
and what a deep impression his words must have made : 



88 Life of William Cobbett. 

"At a moment when we are entering on a scene deeply 
interesting, not only to tliis nation, but to the whole civil- 
ized world ; at a moment when we all, without distraction 
of rank or degree, are called upon to rally round, and to 
range ourselves beneath the banners of that Sovereign, 
under whose long, mild, and fostering reign the far greater 
part of us, capable of bearing arms, have been born and 
reared up to manhood ; at a moment when we are, by his 
truly royal and paternal example, incited to make every 
sacrifice and every exertion in a war, the event of which 
is to decide whether we are still to enjoy, and to bequeath 
to oiu' children, the possessions, the comforts, the liber- 
ties, and the national honors, handed down to us fi-om 
generation to generation, by our gallant forefathers ; or 
whether we are, at once, to fall from this favored and 
honorable station, and to become the miserable crouching 
slaves, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, of 
those very Frenchmen, whom the valor of our fleets and 
armies has hitherto taught us to despise ; at such a mo- 
ment, it behooves us, calmly and without dismay, to ex- 
amine our situation, to consider what are the grounds of 
the awful contest in which we are engaged ; what ai-e the 
wishes, the designs, and the pretensions of our enemies; 
what would be the consequences, if those enemies were 
to triumph over us ; what are our means, and what ought 
to be our motives, not only for frustrating their mahcious 
intentions, but for inflicting just and memorable chastise- 
ment on their insolent and guilty heads." 

After describiag the unscrupulous ambition and inso- 
lent pretensions of Bonaparte, and recountiag the atroci- 
ties he had committed against other nations, he continues : 

" On his return from Italy, which he left in a state of 
beggary and irretrievable ruin, he prepared for the inva- 
sion of Egypt, a country which was at peace with France, 
and against the people or the government of which France 
had no cause of complaint ; but the conquest of this coun- 



The ''Register:' 89 

try was necessaiy in order to open a road to the Indian 
possessions of Great Britain. In pursuit of tliis object, 
Bonaparte invaded Egypt, where he repeated his promises 
to respect reHgion, property, and persons, and where, the 
more effectually to disguise his purposes, he issued a 
proclamation, declaring himself and his army to be true 
Mahometans; and boasting of having made war upon 
the Chi'istians and destroyed their religion. One of his 
first deeds after this act of apostacy, was to massacre 
almost all the inhabitants of the populous city of Alex- 
andria. ' The people,' sa;fs one of his generals, ' betake 
themselves to their Prophet, and fill their mosques ; but 
men and women, old and young, and even babes at the 
breast, all ai'e massacred!' Some time after this sanguin- 
ai'y transaction, Bonaparte, having made prisoners of 
thi-ee thousand eight hundred Turks in the fortress of 
Jaffa, and wishing to relieve himself from the trouble and 
expense of guarding and supporting them, ordered them 
to be marched to an open place, where part of his army 
fired on them with musketry and grape shot, stabbing 
and cutting to death the few who escaped the fire, while 
he himself looked on and rejoiced at the horrid scene. 
Nor were his cruelties while in Egypt confined to those 
whom he called his enemies ; for finding his hospitals at 
Jaffa crowded with sick soldiers, and desking to disen- 
cmnber himself of them, he ordered one of his physicians 
to destroy them by poison. The physician refused to 
obey ; but an apothecary was found, willmg to perpetrate 
the deed ; opium was mixed with the food, and thus five 
himdred and eighty Frenchmen perished by the order of 
the general, under whose flag they had fought ; by the 
order of that very man, to whose despotic sway the whole 
French nation now patiently submits. Let them so sub- 
mit, but let us not think of such shameful, such degrading 
submission. Let us recollect, that this impious and fero- 
cious invader was stopped in his career of rapine and 



90 Life of William Gobbett. 

blood by a mere handful of Britons ; and was finally in- 
duced to desert his troops, and to flee from the land he 
had invaded at the approach of that gallant British army, 
by which Egypt was delivered from the most odious and 
most destructive of all its plagues. This it is for us to 
recollect, and so recollecting, shame and disgrace upon 
our heads if we do not resist, if we do not overcome, if we 
do not chastise this rapacious, this bloody-minded tyrant, 
who has now marked out our country for subjugation, oiur 
fields for devastation, our houses for pillage ; and who, ii^ 
the insolence of his ambitiouj has held us forth to the 
world as a meek, a feeble, and cowardly race, destined to 
grace his triumphal car, and to augment the number of 
his slaves. . . . 

" Such are the barbarities which have been inflicted 
on other nations. The recollection of them will never be 
eff"aced : the melancholy story will be handed down from 
generation to generation, to the everlasting infamy of the 
republicans of France, and as an awful warning to all 
those nations whom they may hereafter attempt to invade. 
We are one of those nations ; we are the people whom 
they are now preparing to invade : awful, indeed, is the 
warning, and, if we despise, tremendous will be the judg- 
ment. The same generals, the same commissaries, the 
same officers, the same soldiers, the very same rapacious 
and sanguinary host, that now hold Holland and Switzer- 
land in chains, that desolated Egypt, Italy, and Germany, 
are at this moment preparing to make England, Ireland, 
ane Scotland the scenes of their atrocities. For some 
time past, they have had little opportunity to plunder: 
peace, for a while, has suspended their devastations, and 
now, like gaunt and himgry wolves, they are looking to- 
wards the rich pastures of Britain ; already we hear their 
threatening howl, and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for 
mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save 
us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The rob- 



The ''Eegisterr 91 

beries, the bai'barities, the brutalities they have committed 
in other countries, though at the thought of them the 
heai't sinks and the blood runs cold, will be mere trifles 
to what they will commit here, if we suffer them to tri- 
umph over us. The Swiss and the Suabians were never 
objects of then- envy; they were never the rivals of 
Frenchmen, either on the land or on the sea ; they had 
never disconcerted or checked theii' ambitious projects, 
never humbled their pride, never defeated either their 
ai'mies or their fleets. We have been, and we have done 
all this : they have long entertained against us a hatred 
engendered by the mixtui-e of envy and of fear ; and they 
are now about to make a great and desperate effort to 
gratify this fiu'ious, this unquenchable, this deadly hatred. 
"WTiat, then, can we expect at their hands ? What ! but 
torments, even surpassing those which they have inflicted 
on other nations. They remained but three months in 
Germany; here they would remain forever; there their 
extortions and theii- atrocities were, for want of time, con- 
fined to a part of the people ; here they would be uni- 
versal: no sort, no part, no particle of property would 
remain unseized; no man, woman, or child would escape 
violence of some kind or other. Such of our manufac- 
tories as are movable they would transport to France, 
together with the most ingenious of the manufacturers, 
whose wives and children would be left to starve. Om* 
ships would follow the same coiu-se, with all the commerce 
and commercial means of the kingdom. Having stripped 
us of everything, even to the stoutest of oiu- sons, and 
the most beautiful of our daughters, over all that re- 
mained they would establish and exercise a tyi'anny such 
as the world never before witnessed. All the estates, all 
the fai'ms, all the mines, all the land and the houses, all 
the shops and magazines, all the remaining manufactories, 
and all the workshops, of every kind and description, 
from the gi-eatest to the smallest ; all these they would 



92 Life of William Cohhett. 

bring over Frenchmen to possess, making us their serv- 
ants and their laborers. To prevent us from uniting and 
rising against them, they would crowd every town and 
village with their brutal soldiers, who would devour all 
the best part of the produce of the earth, leaving us not 
half a sufficiency of bread. They would, besides, intro- 
duce their own bloody laws, with additional severities; 
they would divide us into separate classes ; hem us up in 
districts ; cut off all communication between friends and 
relations, parents and children, which latter they would 
breed up in their own blasphemous principles ; they would 
affix badges upon us, mark us in the cheek, shave our 
heads, split our ears, or clothe us in the habit of slaves ! 
— ^And shall we submit to misery and degradation like 
this, rather than encounter the expenses of war ; rather 
than meet the honorable dangers of military combat; 
rather than make a generous use of the means which 
Providence has so bounteously placed in our hands % The 
sun, in his whole coiu-se round the globe, shines not on a 
spot so blessed as this great, and now united kingdom. 
Gay and productive fields and gardens, lofty and exten 
sive woods, innumerable flocks and herds, rich and inex- 
haustible mines, a mild and wholesome climate, giving 
health, activity, and vigor to fourteen millions of people : 
and shall we, who are thus favored and endowed ; shall 
we, who are abundantly supplied with ii'on and steel, 
powder and lead ; shall we, who have a fleet superior to 
the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to 
bring two millions of fighting men into the field; shall 
we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all 
its liberties and honors, to preserve which our fathers so 
often dyed the land and the sea with their blood ; shall 
we thus at once dishonor theii- graves, and stamp -dis- 
grace and infamy on the brows of ovu' children ; and shall 
we, too, make this base and dastardly surrender to an 
enemy whom, within these twelve years, our countrymen 



The '' Register P 93 

have defeated in every quarter of the world! No ; we are 
not so miserably fallen ; we cannot, in so short a space of 
time, have become so detestably degenerate ; we have the 
strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the 
hisolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, must be our efforts, 
but mighty also is the meed. Singly engaged against the 
tyi'ants of the earth, Britaiu now attracts the eyes and the 
heai'ts of mankind ; groaning nations look to her for de-- 
Hverance; justice, hberty, and religion are inscribed on 
her banners ; her success will be hailed with the shouts 
of the universe, while tears of admiration and gratitude 
will bedew the heads of her sons who fall in the glorious 
contest." 

Did not the author of the " Battle of Dorking " get a 
hint or two from this composition? or was the whole 
poem suggested by it ! 

This paper was offered to and accepted by the govern- 
ment, who thought so highly of it that they had a large 
number of copies printed, at an expense of several thou- 
sand pounds, and ordered it to be sent to every parish 
and be read from every Protestant pulpit in the country. 
Its authorship, like the Letter to the King which Cobbett 
■wrote for Queen Caroline, was attributed to various dis- 
tinguished men in England, and it was not until Cobbett 
got at variance with the government in 1809 that he de- 
clared himself the author. The government offered to 
reward him for it, which reward must have been some- 
thing handsome ; but Cobbett refused it ; he could serve 
his country, he said, without reward. Was this a man to 
accept of bribes and to forge letters'? 



94 lAfe of William Cobbett. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OAKES AMES's PREDECESSOBS. STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

Cobbett wrote a great deal on finance and political 
economy, on the origin, nature, effect, and tlie best means 
of getting rid of, or rather of enduring or suffering, the 
National Debt, the great incubus of the English people. 
It is something he made a special study of, something 
about which he wrote more intelligently than nine out of 
ten of those who wrote on the subject. Whether right or 
wrong, he at least made people understand what he was 
talking about, which cannot be said of most of those who 
discussed the subject. And the circumstances which 
caused him to study this subject, as well as the soin'ces of 
his information, are sufficently curious to be given in his 
own words, as narrated by him in one of his Manchester 
Lectures (1833) : " I cannot adopt a better method of ex- 
plaining this matter (loan-making) to you, than by describ- 
ing a transaction by which I was likely to become a loan- 
monger myself, and which first opened my eyes with 
regard to this matter. When I came home from America 
in 1800, 1 was looked upon by the government people as 
likely to become one of their vigorous partisans. It was 
the custom, in those glorious days of Pitt and paper, to 
give to the literary partisans of the government what 
were called ' shces ' of a loan. For instance : Moses was 
the loan-monger ; and as the scrip, as it used to be called, 
was always directly at a premium, a bargain was always 
made. with the loan-monger that he should admit certain 
favorites of the government to have certain portions of 
scrip at the same price that he gave for it. I was offered 
such a portion of scrip, which, as I was told, would put a 
hundred or two pounds into my pocket at once. I was 
frightened at the idea of becoming responsible for the im- 



Oakes Ames's Predecessors. 95 

mense sum upon which this would be the profit. But I 
soon found that the scrip was never to be shown to me, 
and I had merely to pocket the amount of the 'premiimi. 
I refused to have anything to do with the matter, for 
which I got heai'tily laughed at. But this was of great 
utility to me ; it opened my eyes with regard to the na- 
tiu'e of these transactions ; it set me to work to understand 
all about the debt, the funds, the scrij?, and the stock, and 
everything belonging to it." 

This appears very much like the manner in which our 
own Congressmen were approached in the Credit Mobilier 
affair. There were experts in this business, it seems, long 
before Oakes Ames ; and in offering some of the scrip to 
Cobbett, they, too, no doubt, knew "where it would do 
most good ; " but, fortunately, Cobbett had too much 
good sense and uprightness of character to be thus lured 
into the trap, so skillfully set, and escaped the igno- 
minious fate of Ames's victims. Poor S. C- ■ ! What 

a fall was there, my countrymen ! Why did he not come 
out with it, and say, " Yes, I took it ; here it is ; make the 
most of it ! " Had he done this, he would have been- 
cheered by high and low from Maine to California ; for 
there is more manliness in confessing a fault than there is 
meanness in the doing of it. 

After reading the works of Adam Smith and George 
Chalmers, from which, Cobbett tells us, he was unable to 
get a clear view of the subject, he went over all the Acts 
of Parliament connected with the Bank of England from 
the time of William III. to his own time ; and it was not 
till the year 1803 that he considered himself sufficiently 
acquainted with the subject to write on it. In that year 
he read Thomas Paine's "Decline and Fall of the English 
System of Finance," and of that work he says : " Here was 
no bubble ; no mud to obstruct my view ; the stream was 
clear and strong ; I saw the whole matter in its true 
hght ; and neither pamphleteers nor speech-makers were. 



96 Life of William Cobhett. 

after that, able to raise a momentary puzzle in my mind." 
He frequently afterwards speaks iu the highest terms 
of Paine as a financier. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

THE NATIONAL DEBT PITt's WONDERFUL SCHEME TO GET RID 

OF IT. 

When we consider that after the peace of Amiens (1802) 
the national debt amounted to 620 milhon pounds, on 
which interest at the rate of five per cent, was paid, mak- 
ing the huge load of thu'ty-one million pounds annually 
for interest alone ; when we consider that this sum was 
to be raised by taxation on a population of about ten 
millions ; that of these ten millions about one million and 
a quarter were paupers, making an army of cormorants 
living on the body politic ; that the debt increased, after 
the battle of Waterloo, to 885 million pounds — the great- 
est debt ever contracted by any nation — and that, finally, 
taxes to the amount of forty-four million pounds annu- 
ally had to be raised to pay the interest ; when we consi- 
der these facts, we may easily conceive of what imjDortance 
this subject was in Cobbett's time, and how necessary it 
was for him to master the subject of political economy. 
There arose at that time a whole brood of schemers in 
this science, with whose plans and projects Cobbett had 
much to do. In fact this period in English history has a 
strong resemblance to that following the civil war in oiu* 
own country, when we too began to feel the effects of our 
huge burden of debt and taxation; when we, too, had 
our commercial depressions and hai'd times, and a crop of 
greenbackers and repudiationists, and other false schem- 
ers, such as the English had. Cobbett began by attack- 



Tlie National Debt. 97 

iiig Pitt's funding-system, wliicli lie showed to be false in 
pi'inciple and ruinous in practice, and to the application 
of which he attributed most of the misery that then pre- 
vailed in the country. 

Accorduig to the Pitt sinking-fund, the entii'e interest 
on the national debt had to be paid continuously for 
about forty-five years before the people were to get any 
relief from it, or in other words, before they should 
get any diminution of taxation ! It was to work off the 
national debt in some forty or fifty years, and all the 
world applauded it as the wonderful scheme of the 
heaven-born minister ; but Cobbett showed that the debt 
kejjt pace with the fund, and that the scheme was there- 
fore practically useless. " The country gentleman," says 
Cobbett, who thus graphically describes the effect of the 
system in a single sentence, " the country gentleman, who 
wishes and endeavors to live independently upon his 
estate, is obliged to pay to the government, for the sup- 
port of the funding-system, so great a portion of the 
revenue of that estate, that he has not enough left to live 
upon, in the style in which his ancestors lived; and, in 
order to support that style, he sells j)art of his patrimony ; 
once broken into, it goes piece by piece ; his sons become 
merchant's clerks or East India cadets ; his daughters be- 
come companions or ladies women to the wives of those 
in whose service the sons are embarked ; the father, see- 
ing his end approach, secures a life-annuity for the widow ; 
some speculator purchases the tottering old mansion; 
and thus the funding-system swallows up the family." 
Cobbett advocated a reduction of the interest, or even the 
absolute non-payment of the interest, as the only means 
of getting relief. This latter plan, which I believe he 
subsequently rehnquished, was founded on the princijDle, 
that it is better that a certain number of individuals suf- 
fer loss than that the whole nation should sink into 
misery and starvation. The advocacy of such a princixDle, 
5 



98 Life of William Cohhett. 

the unsoimdness of which will the more readily be seen 
by applying it to a small community, created an immense 
outcry; he was attacked on every side as a repudiator 
and the counselor of schemes involving national dishonor ; 
but he defended himself bravely, and although he was 
undoubtedly wrong in proposing non-payment of inter- 
est, he was right in seeking its reduction. However wrong- 
in principle, he showed himself, in ability and knowl- 
edge of pohtical economy, more than a match for his op- 
ponents. As a specimen of how he met his ojDponents in 
this discussion, I shall quote a single paragraph from an 
article in answer to an attack on him in a government 
paper called the Courier : 

"As a consolation at parting, we are assured that the 
funding-system, though somewhat feeble, from having 
been so rapidly drawn upon, is still sound and salutary ! 
We are told, that the siaking-fund is making rapid ad- 
vances towards the extinction of the debt, and that the 
funds should be eased a little by raising the whole, or 
nearly the whole, of the supplies within a year ! Comf ort- 
insf assurance! Profound remark! Judicious advice! 
As to the operation of the sinking-fund, we have seen, 
that, in the space of twenty years, it has tripled the nom- 
inal amount of the annual taxes raised upon us on account 
of debt, and has added in the degree of one half to the 
real annual amount of the taxes raised upon us on ac- 
coxmt of debt. This is rapid enough, I think. Does this 
sagacious politician, this profound political economist, want 
it to go on faster ? What, then, in the name of all that 
is shallow and empty, does he want? But the funding- 
system is to be ' eased; ' and how % By raising the whole, 
or almost the whole, of the supplies within the year. 
Does this wise man bear in mind, that, last year, the 
taxes raised amounted to about £38,000,000, and the ex- 
penditure to abovit £70,000,000? And if he does, does 
he besides think it possible to raise by this year's taxes 



The ''Juverna'' Letters. 99 

neai'ly double the amount of the taxes raised last year? 
Away, away with all such dabblers and dreamers ! Send 
them to 'Change Alley, or to Bedlam ; but let them not 
approach even the steps to the Cabinet or the Parlia- 
ment." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE "JUVERNa" letters. 

CoBBETT not only criticised men and measures pretty 
freely himself, but allowed others who wrote for his 
paper to do the same. His contributors imitated their 
chief ; and one of them, unfortunately, or fortunately, as 
the final result may be judged, imitated him so success- 
fully as to rouse the ire and call down the vengeance of 
persons high in power and authority. In the months of 
November and December, 1803, there appeared in the Reg- 
ister a number of letters signed " Juverna," in which the 
writer criticised the officers of the government in Ireland 
in a sarcastic and somewhat abusive style. He compared 
the Ii'ish administration to the Trojan horse, "full of 
greedy speculators and blood-thirsty assassins ;" spoke of 
the head of the viceroy, Lord Hardwicke, as composed 
of the same material as the famous horse, and de- 
clared that, after diligent inquiiy concerning him, he 
found that " he was in rank an earl, in manners a gen- 
tleman, in morals a good father and a kind husband, 
and that he had a good Ubrary in St. James's Squai-e." 
" Here," he continued, " I should have been forever 
stopped, if I had not, by accident, met with one Mi*. 
Lindsay, a Scotch pai'son, since become (and I am sui-e 
it must have been by divine Providence, for it would 
be impossible to account for it by secondary means) 
Bishop of Killaloe, in Ireland. From this Mr. Lindsay, I 



100 Life of William Cohhett. 

farther learned that my Lord Hardwicke was celebrated 
for understanding the modern method of fattening sheep 
as well as any man in Cambridgeshire." He also said that 
the appointment of Lord Hardwicke as viceroy of L-eland 
was like "putting the surgeon's apprentice to bleed the 
charity patients ; " a comparison which is said to be quite 
in the style of Cobbett, and it is indeed not unlikely that 
his hand added a Uttle pepper to the mess. The govern- 
ment seemed determined on seciuing a conviction, for 
they had a great array of talented counsel, consisting of 
six of the most eminent lawyers, including Perceval, after- 
wards prime minister, and the celebrated Harry Erskine. 
The Attorney-General, Sir Vicary Gibbs, characterized 
" Juverna's " letters as " cool and deliberate endeavors to 
d-egrade and villify the whole administration of His Ma- 
jesty's government ia Lreland ; " and Lord Ellenborough, 
the Judge, declared that "to alienate the affections of a 
people from a government, by bringing that government, 
whether by ridicule or obloquy, into disesteem, must be 
considered as a crime," and that " to sneer at the people 
of L'eland, as submitting to be governed by a 'wooden 
head,' must be regarded as an instigation of the Irish to 
rebellion." Yet how mild "Juverna's" strictures seem 
compared with the utterances of L-ish writers and L'ish 
orators at the present day! The ]wcy brought ia a 
verdict of " Guilty of havmg attempted to subvert the 
king s authority," and Cobbett was condemned to pay a 
fine of £500. 

No sooner was this action concluded than another, 
founded on the same letters, was begun against him by a 
different party. The first attempt was so successful that 
it encouraged this other "aggrieved party" to attempt 
the same thing. This was Mr. Plrmkett, Solicitor-General 
for Ireland, who had been the public prosecutor in the 
famous trial of poor Robert Emmett. " Juverna" accused 
Plunkett of unnecessary severity in his pleading against 



The ^^ JuvemcC Jjetters. 101 

the prisoner, Emmett, who had made no attempt to de- 
fend himself against the chai'ge brought against him, 
which cu'cumstance alone made severity on the part of 
the prosecutor all the more unnecessary and ungenerous. 
Enunett's father had been the friend and benefactor of 
Phmkett, had oft entertained him at his table ; and " Ju- 
verna '' asserted that he (Plunkett) was probably the very 
man who had insj)ired young Emmett with the principles 
which finally brought him to the scaffold. Plunkett is 
known to have expressed the opinion, for instance, that if 
the bill uniting Ireland to England became a law, no 
Irishman was bound to obey it. " If any man could be 
formd,'' said Juverna, " of whom a young but unhappy 
victim of the justly offended laws of his country had, in 
the moment of his conviction and sentence, uttered the 
following apostrophe : ' That viper, whom my father 
nomished, he it is whose principles and practice now drag 
me into my grave ; and he it is who is now brought for- 
ward as my prosecutor, and who, by an unheard-of exer- 
cise of the royal prerogative, has wantonly lashed with a 
speech to evidence the dying son of his former friend, 
when that dying son had produced no evidence, had made 
no defence, but on the contrary acknowledged the charge 
and submitted to his fate' — if these words had been 
uttered in the presence of Lord Kenyon, he would have 
tmrned with horror from such a scene, in which, if guilt 
were in one part punished, justice was in the whole 
di'ama confounded, humanity outraged, and loyalty insult- 
ed.' The case was tried before the same judge and jui-y, 
and the latter, after considermg the matter for a few 
minutes, awarded the same amount of damages as in the 
former case, £500. 

The writer of these letters was IMr. Johnson, an Iiish 
barrister, afterwards a judge; and he having declared 
himself the author, Cobbett was relieved from those heavy 
fines, which, says ]\Ir. Watson, were either paid by Mr. 



102 Life of William Cobhett. 

Johnson or not paid at all. Cobbett remained silent con- 
cerning these trials ; he never said anything about them ; 
but they left a deep impression on his mind, all the deeper 
on account of his silence ; an impression which eventually 
worked a great change in his views concerning the liberty 
of the British subject and the character of the British 
government. It was the first time that his loyal notions 
about British liberty of speech were seriously shaken. 
" He did not recognize in these proceedings," says Sir 
Henry L. Bulwer, in his excellent httle work entitled His- 
torical Characters, "the beauties of the British Constitu- 
tion, nor the impartial justice which, he had always 
maintained when in America, was to be found in loyal old 
England. He did not see why his respect for his sove- 
reign prevented him from saying or letting it be said that 
a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was a very ordinary man, 
nor that a Solicitor-General of Ireland had made a very 
cruel and ungenerous speech, where the facts thus stated 
were perfectly true. The Tory leaders had done nothing 
to gain him as a partisan ; they had done much that jarred 
with his general notions on politics, and finally they 
treated him as a pohtical foe. The insult — for such he 
deemed it — was received with a grim smile of defiance, 
and grievous was the loss which Conservative opinions 
sustained when those who represented them di'ove the 
most powerful controversialist of his day into the op- 
posite ranks." 



Pitt and his Policy. 103 



CHAPTEK IX. 

PITT AND HIS POLICY. 

In the same year (1804), Cobbett addressed a series of 
Letters to Mr. Pitt, wlio liad again become prime minis- 
ter, in which he maiatained that that minister had de- 
parted from the principles he formerly contended for ; 
that he had failed to make good his pledges to the nation ; 
that he had succumbed to France and consented to con- 
ditions that were humiliating and ruinous to England ; 
that as far as he (Cobbett) was concerned, it was the gen- 
eral that deserted his army ; not the soldier that deserted 
his general ; that all his former aims had been abandoned, 
and all his promises falsified. "I was deceived," says 
Cobbett, "by yoin- statements of 1799, to say nothing 
about the more elaborate statements of your Secretary, 
Mr. Rose, whose official pamphlet came forth to aid the 
deception. I believed you, when you so confidently and 
so solemnly declared, that 'the war might be carried on 
for any length of time without the creation of new debt,' 
and that ' it would not be difficult to provide taxes for 
eight years ;' and though I saw you, in two years af ter- 
wai'ds, make a peace, in which not only all your avowed 
objects of the war were abandoned, but by which the 
ancient honors of the country were surrendered ; though 
I saw the balance of Eiu'ope completely overset ; though 
the enemy seized state upon state even during the nego- 
tiations ; and though I clearly saw and explicitly foretold 
that England herself would be exposed to that constant and 
imminent danger, of which every man is now feelingly 
sensible ; ia spite of all this, was I still to adhere to you, 
still to extol you, on pain of beiag stigmatized as a politi- 
cal deserter? Will any one, even in the purlieus of 
Downing Street and "Whitehall, attempt to maintain a 



104 Life of William Cobbett. 

proposition so repugnant to reason? Because you, either 
from choice or necessity; impelled either by your interest, 
your ambition, or the consequences of your errors, changed 
your coui-se in politics, throwing aside all the principles 
which had induced me to follow you, was I bound to 
change too ? Is the mere oiame of Pitt (for there was ht- 
tle else left) sufficient to compensate for the absence of 
everything that we deshe to find in a minister? ... Is 
there any one who will pretend, that you are not only so 
great as to have a right to abandon your principles, with- 
out exposing yoiu-self to censiu-e, but to render it a duty 
in others, to abandon theirs for the sake of yielding you 
support? Is there any one who will venture to urge a 
pretension so offensive, so insulting to the feelings of the 
world? And if not, if it be not insisted that every man 
who once supports a principle of yours becomes by that 
act solely yom' bondsman for hfe, then I think, if deser- 
tion be a proper word to employ, it will be allowed, that 
I did not desert you, but that you deserted me." 

Cobbett's subsequent writings show, as clear as day- 
light, that Pitt's system of government impoverished and 
demoralized the English people to an unparalleled extent. 
Although Pitt began his career with a project of reform, 
he became alarmed after the French Kevolution, and inau- 
gurated a policy the reverse of all that was hberal, con- 
stitutional and wise. His grand blunder was the refusing 
of Napoleon's offer of peace in 1799, and beginning that 
series of wars and alhances against France, which finally 
ended, after his death, in the overthrow of Napoleon, but 
in the almost total ruin of the English people. He found 
England gold and he left it paper ; he found England's 
debt 250 milhons, and he left it over 600 milhons; he 
foimd England's destitute poor 1 in 18 of the population, 
and he left them 1 in 7. He doubled the number of par- 
ish paupers, tripled the number of tax-gatherers, tripled 
tenfold the number of bank-notes, and banished specie 



J^itt and his Policy. 105 

out of the kingdom ; lie more than tripled the pension- 
list in number of names as well as in amount of pensions; 
he made grants and pensions of more than half a million 
a year to his supporters and their kinsfolk; he maintained 
swai'ms of spies and informers, especially in Ireland ; he 
effaced the lilies and yielded the honor of his country's 
flag in his negotiations with France ; and finally, notwith- 
standing all his combinations and alliances agaiast her, 
he could not prevent the power of France from breaking 
through all boiuids, and extending itself over every part 
of Europe. Furthermore he loaned to two contractors, 
members of Parliament, £40,000 of the pubhc money, 
vnthout interest, in order to secure theu' votes ; and he 
defended his friend and supporter, Lord Melville, when 
ai'raigned in the House of Commons for corruption, main- 
taining that he was guilty of no delinquency, though it 
was PEOVED that by the malversation of his lordship and 
his secretary the coTintry had suffered a loss of several 
MILLIONS. "He was a great talker^'' says Cobbett, in his 
letter to Sir Robert Peel, "a man of showy but shallow 
parts ; an impudent and dextrous declaimer ; a man always 
capable to give reasons sufficient to keep his adherents in 
countenance in doing acts of injustice and folly. But 
nothing did he ever understand with regard to the well- 
governing of a country. He did not see the tendency of 
his schemes and efforts. He was short-sighted in the 
extreme. He appeared to possess not the smallest degree 
of profundity. He never dipped beneath the surface of 
things; but lived along from expedient to expedient. 
And he at last died, leaving bad to become daily worse 
and worse." 

If the vast sums raised by Pitt for armaments and 
fleets and subsidies of foreign nations were needed for 
the defence of the liberty, the independence of Britain, 
or even for the protection of British interests, he would 
have been justified in what he did ; but they were not ; 
5* 



106 Life of William Cohhett. 

they were expended in foreign wars and foreign alliances 
whose expediency was more than doubtful ; the resources 
of England were di-ained in the vain and useless support 
of legitimate monarchy; in the vain and useless endeavor 
to suppress that parvenu, Napoleon, whom the narrow- 
miaded George III. could not abide; to dethrone the 
man with whose nephew England subsequently formed a 
union of arms and of interests ; with whose nephew Eng- 
land's queen associated on equal terms, whom she received 
into her halls and home with kisses and compliments. 
Such was Pitt's poHcy, a policy which bequeathed to Eng- 
land burdens under which she has been staggering ever 
since, and of which she will probably never get rid.* 

Cobbett had seen with his own eyes the wide-spread 
suffering and degradation caused by the false poHcy of 
this minister, and he could not help expressing his con- 
demnation of him in a vehement and unrestrained manner. 
The distance of time renders the view clearer ; Pitt is 
now no longer regarded as " the Heaven-born minister " 
whose policy displayed the highest wisdom of man ; and 
for this very reason all the more honor is due to the man 
who had the sagacity to perceive and the courage to ex- 
pose his fallacies at a time when every body else regarded 
him as almost superhuman in statesmanlike qualities. 

* Leigh Hunt, in Ms Autobiography, thus sums up the history of 
Pitt's policy : "A coalition and a tergiversation alternately ; now 
a speech and a fight against Bonaparte, who beat them ; then a 
speech and a fight against England, who bought them off ; then, 
again, a speech and a fight against Bonaparte, who beat them 
again; and then, again, as before, a speech and a fight against 
England, who again bought them off. Meanwhile the allies took 
every thing they could get, whether from enemy or friend, seizing 
with no less greediness whatever bits of territory Bonaparte threw 
to them for their meanness, then pocketing the millions of Pitt, 
for whicJi we are paying to this day." 



Happy Years. 107 



CHAPTEE X. 

HAPPY YEARS. MISS MITFOKd's PLEASING DESCRIPTION. 

CoBBETT was now established on liis farm near Botley, 
a village about five miles from Southampton, and sixty- 
eight from London. Here he had bought an estate, on 
which he hved the life of an English coimtry gentleman ; 
happy himself, and spreading happiness all around him ; 
and here he spent the years between 1805 and 1809, which 
seem to have been the very happiest of his life. Prosper- 
ous in his business, and having a trusty man in London as 
managing editor of the Register and his various other 
printing enterprises, he passed most of his time on his 
farm, and devoted himself with great ardor and enthusi- 
asm to all the sports and pleasures of country life. He 
not only had a great deal to do with the planting of 
American trees, and American corn, and the improving of 
his farm in various ways, but devoted a good deal of at- 
tention to coursing, fishing, single-stick exercise, and box- 
ing-matches. Miss ]\Iitford, who became acquainted with 
him about this time, gives, in her Recollections of a Liter- 
ary Life, a very pleasing pictui'e of his house, his family, 
and his manner of hving at this time : 

" Sporting, not politics, had brought about our present 
visit and subsequent intimacy. We had become acquainted 
with Mr. Cobbett two or three years before, at this very 
house, where we were now driving to meet an acquaintance 
of my father's. For my father, a great sportsman, had 
met him while on a cotu'sing expedition near Alton ; had 
given him a greyhound that he had fallen in love with ; 
had invited him to attend another com'sing meeting near 
oiu' own house in Berkshire ; and finally, we were now, in 
the early autumn, with all manner of pointers, and setters, 



108 Life of Williain Cobbett. 

and greyhounds, and spaniels, shooting ponies, and gun- 
cases, paying the retui^n visit to him. 

" He had at that time a large house at Botley, with a 
lawn and gardens sweeping down to the Bursledon Eiver, 
which divided IVIr. Cobbett's territories from the beautiful 
grounds of the old friend with whom we had been origi- 
nally staying, the great 'Squire of the place. His own 
house, — large, high, massive, red, and. square, and perched 
on a considerable eminence, — always struck me as being 
not unlike its proprietor. It was filled at that time almost 
to overflowing. Lord Cochrane was there, then in the 
very height of his war-like fame, and as unlike the com- 
mon notion of a warrior as could be. A gentle, quiet, 
mild young man, was this burner of French fleets and 
cutter-out of Spanish vessels, as one might see in a sum- 
mer-day. He lay about under the trees, reading Selden 
on the Dominion of the Seas, and letting the children (and 
children always know with whom they may take liberties) 
play all sorts of tricks with him at their pleasure. His 
ship's surgeon was also a visitor, and a young midship- 
man, and sometimes an elderly lieutenant, and a New- 
foundland dog; fine sailor-like creatm-es all.* Then there 

*Lord Cochrane, whose history is a very remarkable one, was 
one of the noblest of all Cobbett's friends — a man of perfectly sim- 
ple, guileless, open, candid disposition, without any worldly wis- 
dom, but uncommonly fearless and skillful as a commander. 
Singularly enough, he was destined to undergo an experience sim- 
ilar to Cobbett's, only far worse ; and I am inclined to think that 
this sad experience, the result of an unjust sentence, was, like 
Cobbett's, owing far more to his liberal political opinions than to 
any other cause. He was, in 1813, accused of being an accom^plice 
in the Berenger frauds, by which the price of the funds was raised, 
on the report that a stafE-officer had come in haste from the allied 
armies in France with the news of Napoleon's defeat and death. 
He was tried by a court presided over by Lord Ellenborough — the 
same judge, or one of the judges, that condemned Cobbett to a 
fine of £1,000 and an imprisonment of two years in Newgate — 



Happy Years. 109 

was a very learned clergyman, a great friend of Mr. Gif- 
ford, of the 'Quarterly,' with his wife and daughter — 
exceedingly clever persons. Two literary gentlemen from 
London, and ourselves, completed the actual party; but 
there was a lai'ge fluctuating series of guests for the hour, 
or guests for the day, of almost all ranks and descriptions, 
from the earl and his countess to the farmer and his dame. 

whose summing-up was notoriously unfair in tliis as in otlier cases. 
Lord Cochrane was condemned to pay a fine of one thousand 
pounds, to be imprisoned for one year, and to be exposed for two 
hours with another of tlie accused on tlie pillory in front of the 
Royal Exchange. His colleague in Parliament, Sir Francis Bur- 
dett, declared that if this last were done, he would stand with him 
on the pillory. Fearing a riot among the people, — who sympa- 
thized strongly with Lord Cochrane, and who, wiser than his 
judges, felt that he was innocent of the charge brought against 
him, — the government remitted this part of the penalty. The im- 
prisonment, however, he underwent, and the fine he paid. The 
Bank of England retains to this day the one-thousand-pound note 
by which he paid his fine, on the back of which he wrote a sen- 
tence to the effect that he paid it under protest, and because, in 
his imprisonment, his health was failing (for he would never have 
been released until he paid the fine), and because he hoped, on 
regaining his liberty, to redeem his name from the stain which now 
rested on it. A penny subsci'iption was opened to reimburse him 
for the amount of the fine, and long before the closing of the sub- 
scription-books the thousand pounds were raised. Not being able, 
on his release, to secure any employment from the government of 
las own country, he took service under the Chilian and Brazilian 
flags, 1821, and showed such marvelous daring and matchless skill 
in his effo.rts to free those peoples from the Spanish and the Portu- 
guese yoke, that he defeated the Spaniards and the Portuguese in 
nearly every encounter, and earned the appellation of El Diablo 
(the Devil) from his enemies. Returning to England, he suc- 
ceeded, with the aid of his devoted and faithful wife, in proving 
his innocence and causing the unjust sentence passed on him to 
be revoked or annulled. In 1832 he was restored to his position 
in the navy, and finally gazetted as rear-admiral. Dying in 1860, 
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, one of the most honored 
men in the kingdom. 



110 Life of William Cobhett. 

The house had room for all, and the heart of the owner 
would have had room for three times the number. 

"I never saw hospitality more genuine, more simple, or 
more thoroughly successful in the great end of hospitality, 
the putting of every body completely at his ease. There 
was not the slightest attempt at finery, or display, or gen- 
tility. They called it a fai^m-house, and everything was 
in accordance with the lai-gest idea of a great English 
yeoman of the olden time. 

" Everything was excellent,-^everything abundant, — all 
served with the greatest nicety by trim waiting-damsels^ 
and everything went on with such quiet regularity, that 
of the large circle of g-uests not one could find himself in 
the way. I need not say a word more in praise of the 
good wife, to whom this admirable order was mainly due. 
She was a sweet motherly woman, realizing our notion of 
one of Scott's most charming characters, Ailie Dinmont, 
in her simplicity, her kindness, and her devotion to her 
husband and her children. 

"At this time, Cobbett was at the height of his politi- 
cal reputation ; but of politics we heard little, and should, 
I think, have heard nothing, but for an occasional red-hot 
patriot, who would introduce the subject, which our host 
would fain put aside, and get rid of as speedily as possi- 
ble. There was something of Dandle, Dinmont about 
him, with his unfailing good humor and good spirits ; his 
heartiness ; his love of field-sports ; and his liking for a 
foray. He was a tall, stout man, fail*, and sunburnt, with 
a bright smile, and an air compounded of the soldier and 
the farmer, to which his habit of wearing an eternal red 
waistcoat contributed not a little. He was, I think, the 
most athletic and vigorous person that I have ever known. 
Nothing could tire him. At five in the morning, he would 
begin his active day by mowing his own lawn, beating his 
gardener, Eobinson, — the best mower, except himself, in 
the parish, — at that fatiguing work. 



Happy Years. Ill 

" For early rising, indeed, lie had an absolute passion ; 
and some of the poetry that we trace m his writings, 
whenever he speaks of scenery or of rural objects, broke 
out in this method of training his children into his own 
matutinal habits. The boy who was first down stairs was 
called the Lark for the day, and had, among other indul- 
gences, the pretty privilege of making his mother's nose- 
gay, and that of any lady visitors. Nor was this the only 
trace of poetical feeling he displayed. Whenever he de- 
scribed a place, were it only to say where such a covey 
lay, or such a hare was found sitting, you could see it ; so 
graphic, so vivid, so true was the picture. He showed the 
same taste in the piu'chase of his beautiful farm at Botley, 
Fairthom ; even in the pretty name. To be sure, he did 
not give the name ; but I always thought that it uncon- 
sciously influenced his choice in the purchase. The beauty 
of the situation certainly did. The fields lay along the 
Bm-sledon River, and might have been shown to a for- 
eigner as a specimen of the richest and loveliest English 
scenery. In the cultivation of his garden, too, he dis- 
played the same taste. Few persons excelled him in the 
management of vegetables, fruit, and flowers. His green 
Indian corn ; his Carolina beans ; his water-melons, could 
hardly have been excelled even in New York. His wall- 
fruit was equally splendid, and much as flowers have been 
studied since that day, I never saw a more glowing or a 
more fragrant autumn garden, than that at Botley, with 
its pyi-amids of hollyhocks, and its masses of chma-asters, 
of cloves, of mignonette, and of vaiiegated geraniums. 
The chances of life soon parted us — as, without grave 
fault on either side, joeople do lose sight of one another, — 
but I shall always look back with pleasure and regret to 
that visit. 

"While we were there, a grand display of English 
games, especially of single-stick and wresthng, took place 
under Mr. Cobbett's auspices. Players came from all 



112 Life of William Cohhett. 

parts of the country, — the south, the west, the north, — ■ 
to contend for fame and g'lory, and also, I beheve, for a 
well-filled purse. What a sore and bitter thmg it must 
have been for Cobbett to be torn from this bright, cheer- 
ful, happy, healthy home, and cast among felons into a 
dark, close, and thick- walled prison ! How true it is that 
it is not good for us to know the future, for this would 
destroy all our enjoyment of the present." 



CHAPTEE XI. 

COBBETT AND DOCTOR MITFOED. 

Miss Mitford's father. Dr. Mitford, who is described by 
Mr. Home as a "jovial, stick-at-nothing, fox-hunting 
squire of the three-bottle class," and by his daughter as 
" the handsomest and cheerfulest of men," seems to have 
become an intimate friend of Cobbett's. The two men 
had much in common ; for the doctor, like Cobbett, was a 
man of plain, blunt, generous nature, a liberal in politics, 
loved by children and women, and j)assionately fond of 
country-sports. Had he stuck to such men as Cobbett, 
and to such sports as he and Cobbett loved, he would 
never have come to the pitiable plight which subsequently 
was his fate — dependent for a subsistence, after losing a 
fortune of £70,000, on the hard-won literary earnings of 
his daughter. He had fallen into the hands of aristo- 
cratic sharpers and gamblers in London, who found no 
difficulty in fleecing a man of such easy, open, and con- 
fiding natiu'e. 

There are some very ciu-ious and characteristic passages 
in Cobbett's letters to the doctor, recently 23ublished in 
" Miss Mitford's Friendships," edited by Mr. L'Estrange. 
They show that his amusements and pursuits at this time 
were anything but literary, for he seems to have given his 



IIwppii Years. 113 

whole heart and soul to farming aud country sports. He 
was now at flood-tids in the very kind of life he loved. 
His letters are full of tree-planting, hare-coursing, and 
dog-breeding, and he almost forbids the doctor to say 
anything about politics at all. In the first letter (Novem- 
ber, 1807), he describes himself as stopping in the rain, 
and climbing up an ash-tree, "with the aid of the par- 
. son's ladder," in order to obtain some seeds of the tree. In 
the next (December, 1807) occiu'S this very characteristic 
passage : " Give me some news about dogs. D ^n poli- 
tics ! Is Snip with pup yet ? A matter of far more im- 
portance than whether the Prince of Asturias be hanged 
or not ; or whether his silly father be in a madhouse ; or 
what grenadier is the gallant of his old punk of a mother. 
"VVe ai'e well set to work, truly, to pester our brains about 
these rogues ! It matters not a straw to us whether Na- 
poleon hang them all, or send them a-begging. And as 
to our fellows at Whitehall and Westminster, we shall be 
sure to do right if we hate them all. . . . When I 
write you about dogs (which are always the main sub- 
ject) I will send you some seeds by way of episode." 

Some months later, he writes in a postscript : " I am 
flattered by what you say about my lyuhllc letter. Nothing 
was ever more read, I believe; and I am not without 
hope that it will produce some effect. I may be a very 
illiterate fellow ; but I certainly am more than a match 
for all those pretenders to learning and philosophy. There 
is a damned cant in vogue, which, when attacked by plain 
sense and reason, discovers its weakness." 

The following passage, written in October, 1808, is in 
his best, bold style: "The king's answer to the addi-ess 
of the Londoners is the inost insolent thing of the kind 
that any king of England ever did. But do they not de- 
serve it? Ay, that they do. He has three hundi-ed 
thousand red-coats to keep us down. Why should such a 
king be at all delicate ? As long as the Londoners flat- 



114 Life of Williaiu Cobbett. 

tered him, it was all very well ; but the moment they at- 
tempted to advise, they got a snap. Well, we deserve it, 
and ten thousand times more at his hands. The nation is 
a base, rascally crew, and he knows it. Has he not three 
million [£3,000,000] of droits of admu-alty now in his 
pouch ? Has he not done act upon act that I need not 
point out to you '? Is he not exempted from the mcome 
tax? Well, then, who can blame him? Snails should be 
trod upon. Smash them, old fellow, for they deserve it 
all. Ay, and they will love you the better, too. Oh what 
a base and degenerate nation ! Do you feel any anxiety 
about the result of this war for Ferdinand? I do not, 
and do not care which way it goes. . . . We are 
spending our money and our blood for the old race of 
kings against the people. We deserve to be treated like 
dogs, and like dogs we are treated." 

What a commentary on royalty it is, that such an igno- 
rant, incapable, and narrow-minded man as George III. 
should, for sixty years, have been allowed to rule over the 
vast British empire ! According to Buckle, he had not a 
glimpse of one of the sciences, knew no more of the 
French people than of the people of Kamtchatka, and had 
hardly the abihty of one of the lowf st clerks of his gov- 
ernment. And although sui-rounded by the most brilliant 
constellation of orators, writers, and statesmen, his every 
step was wrong, and he did more to ruin the nation than 
any of his predecessors. Why should such a man be the 
ruler of a great nation? 

Here is a passage displaying, in the hopes of a fond fa- 
ther, the kindly side of his nature : "'James always hears 
what you say of him, and always spreads your fame 
among those who do not know you, and to whom he prat- 
tles. As far as I can now judge, he will be just such an- 
other fellow as myself ; and, were it not too much to indulge 
the hope, I would fain flatter myself that he will cause the 
Begister to live when the first author of it shall miagle 



Moyal Beggars. 115 

with his native dust. As we proceed in life, the objects 
of oui" pursuits and oiu* enjoyments change ; the change 
proceeds as we proceed toward the gi'ave ; and even in 
oiu' last moments, there is, in general, something to com- 
fort us. Yet do the mass of mankind talk of the Author 
of this wise scheme as if He were no better and no gi-eater 
than a pai'tial politician. Poor James has led me into this 
digression; he is now at the other end of the table, mak- 
ing scratches upon p^:«r, which he calls ^^awing,' quite 
unconscious." 

Unfortunately, Cobbett was separated from Dr. Mitford 
thi'ough some trouble arising with a thii'd party. Mr. L'Es- 
trange says that " a dispute between Mr. Cobbett and an- 
other gentleman, in which Dr. Mitford became involved, 
sepai-ated the famiUes. Miss Mitford, nevertheless, con- 
tinued to admire his talents, though admitting his vio- 
lence, and spoke highly of his endearing domestic qualities. 
'Milder thoughts attend him,' she writes; 'he has my 
good Avdshes, and so have his family, who were, and I dare 
say are, very amiable, pai-ticularly his very plain, but very 
clever and very charming, eldest daughter.' " Mr. L'Es- 
trange informs us that this lady, IMiss Ann Cobbett, is still 
alive ; yet I remember reading, more than a year ago, a 
report of her death. 



CHAPTER XII. 

KOYAL BEGGAES. TBIAL OF THE DUKE OF YORK. 

Cobbett now began to side with men of an entirely dif- 
ferent stamp from those he formerly sided with ; it was 
not enough for him to ttu-n from Tories to Whigs, bvit 
from Tories to Radicals ; for he seldom took a middle path 
in anythmg he ever did. He became the coadjutor of 
Major Cart-svi'ight, Mi-. Henry Hunt, Lord Cochrane, and 
Sii' Francis Burdett ; all of whom sought a radical reform 



116 Life of William Cohbett. 

in parliamentary representation. And when the king 
sent a message to the House of Commons, requesting an 
increase of the incomes of the junior members of his 
family, Cobbett came out with an article in the Register 
which at once showed the world where he stood. He ex- 
pressed indignation at the request of the king, which 
request would, he said, if granted, add to the incomes- of 
the royal fami^ — all of whom, besides their pensions, 
held posts and preferments from which they derived con- 
siderable salaries — -the sum of £51,000 a year, which 
would have to be raised by increasing the burdens of the 
people, who were already nearly crushed to earth with 
taxes of every description; and he very pertinently ob- 
served that it was not customary for a rich man to ask 
the parish to provide for his offspring. 

The English people, however, stiu'dy as they are in 
maintaining their rights in other resjpects, never hesitate **• 
to let their princes, whenever they want money, thrust 
their hands deep down into the public purse, and take 
what they please. "We have seen this often repeated since 
Cobbett's time ; and although strong remonstrances have 
frequently been made against increasing the heavy buixlen 
of taxation by adding thousands of pounds to the already 
large incomes of the childi'en of an enormously rich 
queen, it is, nevertheless, invariably done. It is a curious 
trait in the character of the English people, that when 
tens of thousands of the common people are straining 
e /ery nerve in order to live, when trade is crushed, when 
the land swarms with beggars and paupers, when the 
most abject poverty stares them in the face wherever they 
turn, their representatives in Parhament unhesitatingly 
vote an addition of thousands of pounds to the incomes 
of their princes. One would think these princes would 
be ashamed to add to the burdens of the people, and that 
they would rather try, by renouncing part of then' in- 
comes and endeavoring to earn a living for themselves, to 



Tioyal Beggars. 117 

alleviate tlian to aggravate these burdens. Why should 
not princes learn to work and earn a livelihood as ,well 
as other peoj)le? "What on earth have they done, that 
working people should give their earnings to suj)j)ort 
them? Is not theii- inability to support themselves a 
proof of their worthlessness ? Can there be anything 
more senseless than for a people to take one family out 
of a milHon, and feed and fatten, pet and pamper its 
members until they are ready to bui'st, and then fall down 
on theii" bellies and worship them ? 

Another circumstance connected with a member of the 
royal family soon gave him occasion for still more annoy- 
ing observations ; a circumstance regarding which he ex- 
pressed the plain blunt sense of the English people in an 
unbearably pertinent and forcible manner. In fact, these 
observations were the primary cause, as we shall presently 
see, of the prosecution that was shortly afterwards begmi 
against him, and of the severe punishment with which he 
was visited. But before relating this circumstance, I must 
state, that when the above proposition of an addition to the 
incomes of the members of the royal family was brought be- 
fore Parliament, and when one of the noble lords proposed 
an addition of £1,000 a year to the income of each of the 
members of the royal family, the Duke of York, one of 
the sons of the king, professed unwilHngness to receive 
from the people such an addition to his income, no doubt 
wishing it to be understood that he was too sensible of 
the weight of then* present bui-dens to wish to add any- 
thing to them ; but the truth was that he did not dare to 
accept of such an addition, lest some member, opposed 
to such grants, might draw attention to an item on 
the credit side of the civil list, in the following words : 
" By amount of sums advanced to his Royal Highness the 
Duke of York, to be paid by instalments of £1,000 quar- 
terly, £54,000 17s. 6d.;" none of which instalments, says 
]Mi-. Watson, had, in all likeliliood, been paid. 



118 ^{A ^f Willimn Cohhett. 

It was concerning the conduct of this Duke of York, 
whc^was at this time Commander-in-Chief of the army, 
and consequently in rank and station one of the greatest 
personages in the kingdom, that in 1809 a Parhamentary 
inquiry was made. This inquuy disclosed the astonish- 
ing fact that promotions, appomtments, and exchanges in 
the army were procured through the duke's mistress, — a 
certain Mrs. Clarke, whom he had finally discarded, — at 
reduced prices, ranging from £200 all the way up to 
£900, and that the proceeds were used by her in keeping 
up the duke's establishment in Gloucester Place. And 
here I may mention that the purchase system, which ex- 
isted in the British army till within a few years ago, was 
limited to the infantry and cavalry, and that the legiti- 
mate prices of commissions, in the Life Guards for in- 
stance, were in 1868 as follows: Lieutenant-Colonel, 
£7,250; Major, £5,350; Captain, £3,500; Lieutenant, 
£1,785; Cornet, £1,260. In the Foot Guards the prices 
were considerably higher, and in some of the line regi- 
ments not so high.* 

The motion for the inquiry was made by Mr. Wardle — 
a brave and talented gentleman, who came into the House 
of Commons for the first time, and who was threatened 
with all manner of dire consequences should he persist in 
his design of making such an inquiry — and seconded by 
Sir Francis Burdett, Cobbett's new friend. The trial 
lasted nearly two months ; the charges were proved be- 
yond a doubt; and yet, so strong is the reverence the 
English have for a prince of the blood, the delinquent 
was neither convicted nor dismissed. The speeches made 
in the duke's favor, and the arguments used to save him 
from dismissal and disgrace, are rare specimens of syco- 
phancy and cowardice, even Canning shuffling and twist- 
ing in a shameful manner, for fear of offending his royal 

* Chambers's Encyclopedia, article Army Commissions. 



"Royal Beggars. 119 

master, the dulse's father. An addi-ess of the Commons 
to the king, announcing then* behef in the guilt of the 
duke, and requesting his removal from his high position 
in the army, was, on motion, lost ; but he was compelled, 
by the loud voice of public opinion, boldly and plainly 
expressed by Cobbett and other writers who thovight like 
him, to resign his position, and thus the main object of 
the inquu-y was attained. However, he was, some time 
afterwards, reinstated. 

Cobbett's comments on the trial, from week to week, 
are remai'kably calm, decorous, and impartial — qualities 
which he by no means always displayed. His observa- 
tions are so striking, his examination of the speeches and 
the evidence so searching and severe, his interpretation of 
the significance of the whole transaction so just and 
comprehensive, that the w^hole story acquires a luminous 
and fascinating character in his hands, and reads like one 
of the best chapters in Macaulay's history. 

I shall, perhaps, by and by, when we have gone over 
the events of Mr. Cobbett's life, and can more leisurely 
examine the character of his writings, give some extracts 
from these observations ; yet I think it necessary to pre- 
sent one single passage here, in order that the reader may 
understand how Cobbett created, by his fearless pen, a 
strong feeling of enmity against him among persons high 
in authority : 

"It was again, in this dfebate, urged, that the duke, 
after the intended reproof, would reform. . . . The 
idea of a hope of reformation does indeed harmonize per- 
fectly with all the talk about the dulce's being imposed 
iipon' about his having fallen into the snares of an art- 
ful woman ; about his being infatuated by her ; and about 
his being bUnded by the excess of his passion for her. 
The passion was not, however, so excessive as to prevent 
him from castmg her off; aye, and that, too, without pay- 
ing her the promised pension, without redeeming her 



120 Life of William Cobhett. 

body from imminent danger of a jail, in about seven 
months after lie had vowed everlasting love to her ; nor 
was it so excessive as to prevent Taylor from carrying a 
message to her (said to be from the duke) thi'eatening her 
with the pillory or the Bastille. But how stand the facts, 
as to the probability of his being imposed upon by this 
ar^/'^fZ woman? To read these speeches [of the friends 
of the duke in Parliament] expressing confident hopes of 
amendment ; to read the whining, snivelling expressions 
of sorrow for the existence of the coiniection, which had 
led to these disclosui"es ; which had led to this exjDosure ; 
which had led to this what Mr. Perceval calls cahmmy 
on the duke ; to read these, who, that was unacquainted 
with the real state of the case, would not suppose Mi*s. 
Clarke to be another Millwood, and the duke another 
Barnwell'? Who would not suppose him to be a youth 
of seventeen or eighteen years of age % An infant at law ? 
A mere chicken % Who would suppose him to be nearly 
forty-six years of age, and to have been a m,arried man 
for about twenty years? The duke is three years older 
than I am ; and he is two years older than a brother of 
mine who has been a grandfather these two or three 
years past ; while Mi'S. Clarke, the artful Mrs. Clarke, is 
now, I believe, little more than thirty years of age. It 
may be that the race of royalty, like trees and plants of 
the superior kind, requii'e more time to bring them to 
matvu'ity ; but then, let it be observed, that the duke has 
had the command of the army for twelve or thnteen 
years past, and that the argument of superior kind cuts 
deeper against him than for him. If J^were, at my age, 
to set up a defence upon the ground of infatuation, of 
being blinded by the passion of love, would not the world 
laugh in my face? Would they not hoot me off? Would 
they not turn up then- noses and the palms of their 
hands against me? 

" As to the confidence which Mr. Perceval expressed in 



Moyal Beggars. 121 

the close of his addi'ess, ' that his royal highness would keep 
in view the uniformly virtuous and exe)tiplary conduct of 
his Majesty, since the commencement of his reign;' not 
knowing anything personally of the conduct here spoken 
of, I do not pretend to offer any opinion with respect to 
the general power and tendency of that example, upon 
the efficacy of which Mi-. Perceval seems to place so 
much reliance ; but taking it for granted that the exam- 
ple is what ]Mi'. Perceval described it to be, it can have 
escaped no one, that the duke has had this examj^le be- 
fore him for the last forty-six years / and, whether it is 
likely that the example will now begin its operation upon 
him, is a question that I readily leave to the reader. 

"Before I quit this part of the subject, I cannot sup- 
press the regret that I feel at perceiving that amongst 
many people, and those too who ought to know better, 
the duke is thought worse of for keeping a mistress than 
for any other joart of the conduct imputed to him. This 
argues a most miserable, unmanly, pitiful way of think- 
ing ; it argues that we are, as a correspondent expresses 
himself, ' a dwai'f ed nation ; ' that our vii'tues, as well as 
our vices, are all diminutive. Not that I would justify, 
or excuse, or palliate the conduct of an adulterer, and 
one, too, whose example was likely to have so mischievous 
an effect ; but this vice, great as it is under any circum- 
stances, and especially under such circumstances, sinks 
out of sight, it becomes not worthy of notice, when com- 
pared to the smallest of the acts of corruption, of low 
villainous, dirty corruption, that have been, with what 
truth the reader will judge, imputed to the Duke of 
York." 

The Tory government of the day would, no doubt, have 
liked nothing better than immediately to make Cobbett 
feel their resentment for his temerity in venturing to 
criticise the conduct of so high a personage in such an 
unbearably disagreeable manner ; but as the case was of 
6 



122 Life of WilUaui Gohbett. 

such a scandalous nature, and pei'sonally affecting the 
royal family, they were anxious that it should sink 
speedily into obhvion ; so they did not dare to meddle 
with him at this time ; they were waiting for a more con- 
venient season, for some other offence for which they 
could more safely lay hands upon him ; and it was not 
long before they found something that suited them 
exactly. 



CHAPTEK XIII. 

THE CATASTKOPHE. TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT. 

In one of the Registers of July, 1809, appeared the 
following article; the consequences of which were so 
serious, I feel compelled to give it entire : 

"Local Militia and German Legion. 

"The mutiny amongst the Local Militia, which, broke out at 
Ely, y/as fortunately suppressed on Wednesday, by the arrival of 
four sgtiadrons of the German Legion Cavaley from Bury, under 
the command of General Auckland. Five of the ringleaders were 
tried by a Court-martial, and sentenced to receive five hundred 
lashes each, part of which punishment they received on Wednesday, 
and a part was remitted. A stoppage for their knapsacks was the 
ground of complaint that excited this mutinous spirit, which oc- 
casioned the men to surround tlieir officers and demand what they 
deemed their arrears. Tlie first division of the German Legion 
halted at Newmarket on tlieir return to Bury.''— Courier (ministe- 
rial) newspaper, Saturday, 24tli of June, 1809. 

" See the motto, English reader ! See the motto ; and 
then do pray recollect all that has been said about the 
way in which Bonaparte raises his soldiers. 

"Well done, Lord Castlereagh! This is just what it 
was thought your plan would produce. Well said, Mr. 
Huskisson ! It really was not without reason that you 
dwelt, with so much earnestness, upon the utility of the 



The CataMrophe. 123 

foreifjn troops, whom Mr. Wardle appeared to tliink of 
no utility at all. Poor gentleman ! lie little imagined Low 
a great genius might find useful employment for such 
troops. He little imagined that they might be made the 
means of compelling Enghshmen to submit to that sort 
of discipline, which is so conducive to the producing in 
them a disposition to defend the country at the risk of 
their lives. Let Mi\ Wardle look at my motto, and then 
say whether the German soldiers are of 710 use. 

'■'■Five hundred lashes each! Aye, that is right! Flog 
them ; flog them ; flog them ! They deserve it, and a 
gi'eat deal more. They deserve a flogging at every meal 
time. Lash them daily, lash them daily. What! shall 
the rascals dare to mutiny, and that too when the German 
Legion is so near at hand ! Lash them, lash them, lash 
them! They deserve it. O yes; they merit a double- 
tailed cat. Base dogs! What, mutiny for the sake of 
the jyrice of a Jcnapsack ! Lash them! flog them! Base 
rascals! mutiny for the price of a goat-skin, and then, 
upon the appearance of the Gertnan soldiers, they take a 
flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees ! 

" I do not know what sort of a place Ely is ; but I really 
shoxild like to know how the inhabitants looked one an- 
other in the face while this scene was exhibiting in then' 
town. I should 'like to have been able to see their faces, 
and to hear their observations to each other, at the time. 

" This occuiTcnce at home will, one would hope, teach 
the loyal a httle caution in speaking of the means which 
Napoleon employs (or rather, which they say he employs) 
in order to get together and to discipline his conscripts. 
There is scarcely any one of these loyal persons who has 
not, at various times, cited the handcuffings and other 
means of force said to be used in drawing out the young 
men of Fx'ance; there is scarcely any of the loyal who 
have not cited these means as a proof, a complete proof, 
that the people of Finance hate Napoleon and his govern' 



124 Life of William Cohhett. 

ment, assist witJi reluctance in Ms wars, and would fain 
see another revolution. I ho^e, I say, tliat the loyal will 
hereafter be more cautious iii di'awing such conclusions, 
now that they see that our ' gallant defenders ' not only 
require physical restraint m certain cases, but even a lit- 
tle blood drawn from their backs, and that, too, with the 
aid and assistance of German troops. Yes ; I hope the 
loyal will be a little more upon their guard in drawing 
conclusions against Napoleon's popularity. At any rate, 
every time they do, in future, bru-st out in execrations 
against the French for suffering themselves to be chained 
together and forced, at the point of the bayonet, to do 
military duty, I shall just republish the passage which 
I have taken for a motto to the present sheet. 

"I have heard of some other pretty little things of the 
sort ; but I rather choose to take my instance (and a very 
complete one it is) from a public print notoriously under 
the sway of the Ministry." 

For writing and publishing this article — which, it must 
be confessed, is severe, yet obviously dashed off in a fit 
of indignation at such shameful treatment of his country- 
men in the presence and by the aid of foreign mercenaries 
: — Cobbett was tried and found guilty of libel against the 
government ; sentenced to an imprisonment in Newgate 
of two years, to pay a fine of a thousand pounds to the 
king, and at the expiration of these two years to give one 
thousand pounds security for his good behavior for seven 
years. That was the penalty. The Duke of York had 
his revenge at last ! The trial was held in the court of 
King's Bench, before Lord Ellenborough, who, having 
presided at his trial and conviction in two other libel 
suits, was not likely to be favorably disposed toward him 
in the third. In fact, his lordship declared, in his address 
to the jury, that, as the law required him to state his 
opinion, he had no hesitation in pronouncing the article 
in question " a most infamous and seditious libel." The 



The Catastrophe. 125 

prosecuting officer (who is the first to give information of 
the matter) was also the same as in the previous trial, 
Attorney-General Gibbs, whom Cobbett ever afterwards 
called " the infamous Gibbs." Cobbett was his own coun- 
sel, and defended himself ; and, although he spoke with 
great force and clearness, I am strongly inclined to think 
that if he had, like the government, employed first-class 
legal assistance, the result would have been a very differ- 
ent one. 

Thus the government that he had once lauded to the 
skies, that he had proclaimed to be superior to every 
other, now laid its hand heavily upon him ; depriving him 
of liberty and property, and seriously injuring him in his 
business relations. But this punishment, terrible as it 
was, instead of breaking him down and makmg him a 
tame and submissive servant of the men that inflicted it, 
had the contrary effect; for, from the moment he saw 
there was no leniency to be expected, from the moment 
he found that every overtui"e was rejected, and that for 
the crime of expressing indignation at the flogging of his 
countrymen, he would have to be shut up for years, like 
a felon, within the dark and gloomy walls of Newgate, he 
firmly made up his mind to let them do then- worst, to 
defy them, and to carry on uncompromising war against 
them until he had caused both them and the deplorable 
state of things they had created in England to disappear 
forever. "From that hour," says Mr. Edward Smith, "the 
sword which had been so near laying by to rust, had its 
blade new-tempered, while the scabbard was clean cast 
away forever." 

Though never a repubhcan, he now became thoroughly 
liberal in his views, and attacked the abuses of govern- 
ment with redoubled energy. He advocated the abohtion 
of many harmful restrictions and a sweeping reform of 
Parliament. He always declared that he did not want 
anything ne%o, but simply the true and faithful enforce- 



126 Life of William Gobhett. 

ment of the laws of England ; tliat the kind of govern- 
ment in England was the best in the world, and that all 
that was wanted was the proper execution of the laws. 
Though he felt deeply the severity and cruelty of the 
punishment inflicted upon him, and though perhaps every 
article he wrote after this was tinged with bitterness at 
the recollection of his never-to-be forgotten incarceration 
in Newgate, he never lost faith in the institutions or the 
laws of his country, nor ever for a moment despaired of 
eventually triumphing over his enemies. 

" In no portion of his life, indeed," says Sir Hem-y Bul- 
wer, "did he show greater courage — in none does the 
better side of his character come out in brighter relief 
than when, within the gloomy and stifling walls of New- 
gate, he carried on his farming, conducted his paper, edu- 
cated his children, and waged war (his most natural and 
favorite pursuit) against his enemies, with as gay a cour- 
age as could have been expected from him in sight of the 
yellow corn-fields and breathing the pure air he loved so 
well." 

His next Register is dated from Newgate prison — where 
he paid the keeper a guinea a day for two whole years in 
order to secure a room apart from the felons — and begins 
thus : " After having published seventeen volumes of this 
work, embracing the period of eight years and a half, — ■ 
during which time I have written with my own hand 
nearly two thousand articles upon various subjects, with- 
out having, except in one single instance, incurred even 
the threats of the law, — I begia the eighteenth volume in 
a prison. In this respect, however, I only share the lot 
of many men who have inhabited this very prison before 
me ; nor have I the smallest doubt that I shall hereafter 
be enabled to follow the example of those men. On the 
triumphing, the boundless joy, the feasting and shouting, 
of the peculators or public robbers, and of all those, 
whether profligate or hypocritical villains, of whom I have 



Reply to the Attorney- GeneraVs Accusation. 127 

been the scom-ge, I look with contempt; knowing very 
well, feeling in my heart, that my situation, even at this 
time, is infinitely preferable to theu's ; and as to the future, 
I can reasonably promise myself days of peace and happi- 
ness, while continual di*ead must haunt their guilty minds, 
while every stir and every sound must make them quake 
for feai". Their day is yet to come." 

Then he goes on to notice various points in the last 
speech of the Attorney-General (who, he says, made three 
speeches to his one), which speech he was not allowed to 
answer verbally. The Attorney- General accused him of 
creating among the soldiers a spirit of impatience and in- 
subordination, and of telling them that they were hai'dly, 
cruelly, and tyi'annically dealt with : whereas " the situa- 
tion of the soldiers of this cormtry was more comfortable 
than at any former period;" also of writing merely for 
the sake of " base lucre," and declared that the article in 
question was one of the blackest libels ever penned, tend- 
ing du'ectly to the destruction of civilization and good 
government. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

cobbett's reply to the attokney-geneeal's accusation. 

What hurt Cobbett most was the accusation that he 
wrote merely for the sake of "base lucre," and against 
this charge — of the falsity of which the reader must be 
convinced from various circumstances akeady mentioned 
— he made a strong defence; part of which I must be 
allowed to quote, as it throws more light on his character 
and influence than anything that can be said by his biog- 
rapher : 

"In general, it is a topic of exaltation, that industry 
and talent ai"e rewarded with the possession of wealth. 



128 Life of Willimii Cobbett. 

The great object of the teachers of youth, in this country, 
seems always to have been instilhng into their minds that 
wealth was always the sure reward of industry and ability. 
Upon what ground, then, is it, that the 'amassing of 
wealth,' the ' making of a fortune,' by the use of industry 
and talents, is to be considered as meriting reproach in 
me ? The fact is not true ; I have not amassed viealth, 
and have not made a fortune, m. any fair sense of those 
phrases. I do not possess a quarter as much as I should, 
in all probability, have gained by the use of the same de- 
gree of industry and talent in trade or commerce. But if 
the fact were otherwise, and if I rode in a coach-and-four, 
instead of keeping one pleasure-horse, and that one only 
because it is thought necessary to the health of my wife ; 
if I had really a fortune worthy of being so called, what 
right would any one have to rej)roach me with the posses- 
sion of it f I have been laboring seventeen years since I 
quitted the army. I have never known what it was to 
enjoy any of that which the world calls pleasure. From 
a beginning with nothing, I have acquu-ed the means of 
making some little provision for a family of six children 
(the remains of thii'teen), besides having for several years 
maintained almost wholly three times as many children 
of my relations. And am I to be reproached as a lover of 
' base lucre ' because I begin to have a prospect (for it is 
nothing more) of makmg such provision ? And am I now, 
upon such a charge, to be stripped, in one way or another, 
of the means of making such provision"? Was it man- 
ly and brave for the Attorney-General, when he knew 
that I should not be permitted to answer him, to make 
such an attack, not only upon me, but upon the future 
comfort of those who depend upon me for support"? 
Verily, this is not to be forgotten presently. As long as 
I or my children are able to remember, this will be borne 
in mind ; and I have not the smallest doubt of seeing the 
day when Sir Yicary Gibbs, and those who belong to him. 



Ileply to the Attorney- GeneraVs Accusation. 129 

will not think of any such thing as that of reproaching us 
with the possession of our own earnings." 

He was at this time caiTying on, besides The Register, 
three other publications, tlu-ee great and useful works. 
The Parliamentary History, The Parliamentary Debates,* 
and The State Trials; and after mentioning the fact, 
that from these works, though immediately and perma- 
nently useful to the public, he could not expect any 
present gain, and that "base lucre" could form no part 
of the object with which they were undertaken, he con- 
tinues in this pleasing strain : " I have heard others ap- 
plauded for theii" public spirit in encountering what have 
been called great national v:iorks. What a clatter was 
made in this way about large editions of Shakespeare and 
Milton, which were at last got rid of by means of a lot- 
tery, authorized by Act of Parhament ! The terms liberal- 
ity and viunijicence were given to the undertakers of 
those works ; but was there anything in them of national 
utility worthy of being compared with these works of 
mine'? I have encountered these works unaided by any- 
body ; I shall ask the Honorable House for no Lottery to 
carry them through. I trust solely to their real intrinsic 
merit for their success ; and if they do succeed, shall I 
therefore be accused of seeking after ' base lucre ? ' This 
work (the Register), of which I now begin the eighteenth 
volume, has had nothing to support it but its own merits. 
Not a poimd, not even a pound in paper money was ever 
expended upon advertising it. It came up like a grain 



* Begun 1803, sold to his printer, Hansard, in 1810. "This un- 
dertaking," says Mr. Edward Smith, "has long since made the 
name of Hansard famous; taut this is the place to remind the 
rt-ader that its origin and successful issue for a number of years, 
is one of the long-forgotten putalic services of "William Cobtaett." 
"When Cobbett was condemned to two years' imprisonment as the 
author, Hansard received three mouths as the printer, of the so- 
called libel 
6* 



130 Life of William Cohhett. 

of mustard-seed, and like a grain of mustard-seed it has 
spread over the whole civiUzed world. And why has it 
spread more than other publications of the same kind? 
There have not been wanting imitations of it. There have 
been some dozens of them, I believe: same size, same 
form, same type, same heads of matter, same title, all but 
the word expressing my name. How many efforts have 
been made to tempt the pubhc away from me, while not 
one attempt has been made by me to prevent it ! Yet all 
have failed. The changeling has been discovered, and 
the wretched adventurers have then endeavored to wreak 
their vengeance on me. They have sworn that I write 
badly ; that I publish nothing but trash ; that I am both 
fool and knave. But still the readers hang on to me. 
One would think, as Falstaff says, that I had given them 
love-powder. No ; but I have given them as great a 
rarity, and something fully as attractive ; namely, tkuth 
in CLEAK LANGUAGE. I have stripped statement and reason 
of the foppery of affectation; and, amongst my other 
sins, is that of having shown, of having proved beyond 
all dispute, that very much of what is called ' learning ' is 
imposture, quite useless to any man whom God has 
blessed with brains. 

"The Register has created in England, and even in 
other countries, a new taste in reading, and an entirely 
new set of notions upon political matters ; and can it be 
possible that any one is to be persuaded, that such an 
effect is to be produced by mere libelling ? No ; nor will 
any one believe that it is to be produced by a miad bent 
upon 'base lucre.' If 'base lucre 'had been my princi- 
pal object, or indeed if it had been a considerable object 
with me, I never should have written with effect; be- 
cause, to write with effect, one's mind must be free, which 
it never can be if the love of gain be uppermost." 

He then shows the inc^ istency of the charge of 
"ba"se lucre" and "seditious intentions." If the first 



England After the French Revolution. 131 

were true, the latter could not be ; for with the destruc- 
tion of the government, with insurrection and confusion 
in the country, all the works he was pubHshing, from 
which his profits were to come, would at once become 
valueless. And with reference to his farms, of which we 
shall speak presently, he says : " For a man who has real 
property to wish for the annihilation of those laws by 
which alone that property is sacred to him, is not likely ; 
for a man who, like me, is planting trees and sowing 
acorns and making roads and breaking up wastes, to wish 
for the destruction of order and law and property, is still 
less likely." 



CHAPTEE XV. 

ENGLAND AFTEE THE FEENCH EEVOLUTION. 

One may imagine the state of things in England, the 
degi'ee of liberty of speech, at this time, when an article 
of such a character should cause its author to be con- 
signed to a jail with thieves, swindlers, and murderers. 
One would imagine that the right-thinking and generous- 
minded part of the English people would have protested 
against it, and condemned it in such unmistakable tones 
that the government would not have dared to put the 
verdict into execution. But those were evil times, in 
which generous impulses were suppressed and opposition 
to authority was looked upon as treason. The French 
Revolution had stopped all political progress in England, 
and from 1793 to 1830 the coimtry was governed on 
reactionary principles; the terrible scenes enacted in 
that Revolution having frightened every liberal thought 
out of the heads of Englishmen, and caused the very 
name of reformer to be hai ^ like the name of atheist. 
Even Burke, the able, philosophic, highly-cultured, prac- 



132 lAfe of William Cohhett. 

tical Edmimd Biu-ke; even lie had his head turned by 
this amazing Revolution, and advocated principles the 
very reverse of what he previously contended for. The 
same man who, twenty years before, had clearly shown the 
folly and impracticableness of the war against the Ameri- 
can colonies, now advocated a European war, compared 
with which the American war was but a mere trifling 
episode. He insisted on the right of England to compel 
France to change her principles, and pleaded for a war, a 
long war, a war of revenge, a war of extermination against 
that "gang of robbers," that "nation of murderers," that 
"hell," that "republic of assassins," that band of "mis- 
creants " who were " the dirtiest, lowest, most fraudulent, 
most knavish of chicaners." * 

" To profess liberal views," says Trevelyan, speaking of 
this period in his admirable Life of Lord Macaulay, " was 
to be hopelessly excluded from all posts of emolument, 
from all functions of dignity, from the opportunities of 
busmess, from the amenities of society. Quiet trades- 
men, who ventvued to maintain that there was something 
in Jacobinism besides the guillotine, soon found theh' town 
or village too hot to hold them, and were glad to place 
the Atlantic between themselves and their neighbors. 
The county representation of England was an anomaly, 
and the borough representation little better than scandal. 
The press was gagged in England and throttled in Scot- 
land. Every speech, or sermon, or pamphlet, the sub- 
stance of which a crovjn lawyer could torture into a seni- 
hlance of sedition, sent its author to the jail, the hulks, 
or the pillory." 

Leigh Hvmt, at this time editor and part proprietor of 
the Examiner, had an experience very similar to Cob- 
bett's. He was prosecuted for hbel against the govern- 
ment three or four times by this same Sir Vicary Gibbs, 

♦Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I., p. 338. 



Em/land After the French JRevolution. 133 

whom he describes as "a little, instable, sharp-featured, 
bihous-looking man ; " as " a bad reasoner, who made half- 
witted charges," and one who " assiimed we could have 
)io motives for ^oriting hut mercenary onesy This last 
seems to have been a standing accusation with him. After 
various unsuccessful prosecutions, Hunt was overtaken at 
last. In 1813 he thus fearlessly described the profligate 
and worthless Prince Regent, who had lately been covered 
with flattering appellations and lauded to the skies by 
some wi'etched sycophantic rhymer : " "What person unac- 
quainted with the true state of the case would imagme, 
in reading these astounding eulogies, that this ' Glory of 
the people ' was the subject of milUons of shrugs and 
reproaches ! — that this ' Protector of the Ai'ts ' had named 
a wretched foreigner his historical painter, in disparage- 
ment or in ignorance of the merits of his own country- 
men ! — that this ' Maecenas of the age ' patronized not a 
single deserving vniter! — that this 'Breather of elo- 
quence ' could not say a few extempore words, if we are 
to judge, at least, from what he said to his regiment on 
its embarkation for Portugal! — that this 'Conqueror 
of hearts' was the disappointer of hopes!— that this 
'Exciter of desu-e,' this 'Adonis in loveliness,' was a 
corpulent man of fifty! — in short, this delightful, bliss- 
fid, loise, pleasurable, honorable, virtuous, true, and 
hnniortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine 
over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic 
ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man 
who had just closed half a century without one smgle 
claim on the gi'atitude of his country or the res^^ect of 
posterity ! " 

For this picture, true no doubt to the life, and worthy 
of Cobbett himself, Leigh Hunt, with his brother John, 
who was his partner, was condemned to suffer, and he 
and his brother did suffer, a punishment neai'ly the same 
as Cobbett's — that is, the two brothers were sentenced to 



134 Life of WilUain Oobhett. 

two years imprisonment, in separate jails, and a fine of 
five hundred pounds each.* 

So shamelessly ' corrupt was the government at this 
time that seats in Parhament and government situations 
were actually advertised for sale, in the public prints, and 
privately sold to the highest bidder. Cobbett counted 
fifty-seven such advertisements in the morning papers. 
Members of Parhament sold their votes — for prices rang- 
ing from £200 to £1,000 — almost without disguise.f The 
pubhc purse was plundered by all manner of jobbers; 
hosts of pensioners, placemen, sinecurists, and parasites 
of every description fed and fattened at the public ex- 
pense. The court was so shamelessly profligate that the fes- 
tive entertainments of iheprhices mid their mistresses -were 
regularly chronicled in the ministerial or court paper ; X 
and the daily press, that power which has been called the 
fourth estate, the guardian of freedom and the scourge 
of villainy, was never more thoroughly corrupt and venal 
than at this time. The ministry bought up scores of 
newspapers, in which they published anything and every 
thing they desu-ed; they hired troops of writers, who 
wrote at their dictation essays, pamphlets, reviews, and 
leading articles, all aimed against liberal ideas, which 

* Strange enough, this same Leigh Hunt, wliose fellow-martyr- 
ship with Cobbett ought to have caused him, one would imagine, 
to have felt some sympathy and kindly feeling toward him, was, 
apparently through jealousy, a bitter enemy of his, attacking him 
whenever he had a chance. The reader has only to be reminded 
that ' Skinpole' in Dickens's Bleak House, is said to be a portrait 
of Leigh Hunt. 

t " Danby did not exactly introduce the practice of bribing mem- 
bers of Parliament, but he was the minister who reduced it to a 
system. The direct bribery of members in hard cash lasted for 
about a century ; Lord Rockingham was the first prime minister 
who refused a bribe. His term of office was remai'kably short. 
The price of a member's vote ranged, under George HI., from 
£200 to i:l,000." Bribery in Parliament : Cornhill Magazine. 
Selections from Cobbett's Political Works, Vol. III. , p. 69. 



England After the French Revolution. 135 

were scattered broadcast over the country and delivered 
free of expense. When the opinion of the nation w^as 
against them, they made up their minds to change that 
opinion by hook or by crook. This was done during the 
whole sixty years of the retrograde and disastrous reign 
of George the Thu-d ;* and in Cobbett's time it was about 
as bad as it had been at any time during this miserable 
reign. He tells us that in all the daily papers, paragraphs 
from individuals, or bodies of men, were inserted for 
payment, no matter what they contained, so that the pro- 

* Every American shovild know that the Acts leading to the war 
against the Colonies were carried through in this way, against the 
unmistakable wishes of the English people. Anecdotes of Lord 
CJmtliam, Vol. II., chap. 41. The reader will remember the ex- 
ample given in Cobbett's own father and his fi-.euds at the fair. 
Judging from the names of the mercenary government writers 
given in this book, the Anecdotes of Lord Chatham, they were 
all, curiously enough, except the first and perhaps the last, Scotch- 
men : Dr. Samuel Johnson, Messrs. Dalrymple, Macpherson, Stuart, 
Lind, Knox, and Naduit. The S cotch and the Swiss are noted lor 
their love of liberty and their heroic bravery in defence of it for 
themselves: but it seems they have no objection to be paid for 
depriving other people of it. There were many Scotchmen, how- 
ever, who fought by the side of Washington ; among others, the 
famous St. Clair— (the Scotch always spell the name Sinclair)— 
who belonged to the same family as the well-known Sir John 
Sinclair and Catharine Sinclair of Thurso Castle. The stain on 
the Scotch name, bad as it may be regarded, is trifling compared 
to that on the name of the Germans, who allowed themselves to 
be bargained for and bought like cattle, wholesale, and trans- 
ported to America to fight the Americans. George III., who paid 
his royal brother, Frederick II. of Hesse-Cassel, the enormous 
sum of £3,000,000 of English money for 22,000 head of these cattle, 
was himself practically a German, crammed with all the narrow 
cmte notions of his race ; hence all his ideas of public policy were 
illiberal, despotic, unconstitutional, and in direct opposition to 
those of the people over whom he ruled. There is no state in 
Germany, even at the present day, that has anything like repre- 
sentative, responsible government. 



136 Life of William Cobbett. 

prietor was not exposed to the lash of the law. The price 
being enormous — half a guinea an inch-^the rich man 
had the whole press for his apologist; while the poor 
man, if he were oppressed or slandered, had not the 
means of appealing to the justice of the pubhc. He 
gives as an instance, the case of Colonel Cochrane John- 
ston, who, being tried by Coiu-t-martial for an offence 
against the laws, and acquitted, " that deeply injured gen- 
tleman was unable to obtain the publication even of so 
brief a thing as the mere decision without paying, to the 
different daily papers, fifty or sixty guineas ;" while long 
paragraphs in defence of other less worthy but wealthy 
parties, whom he names, appeared in all the daily papers. 
"Money, the public money; to share in the immense 
sums raised upon the people ; in some way or other to 
effect this purpose, is the object of ninety-nine out of 
every hundred persons who write and publish their writ- 
ings, and, which object is, and must ever be, in direct and 
necessary hostility to the interests of the people at large. 
If, therefore, there ever was in the world a thing com- 
pletely perverted from its original design and tendency, 
it is the press of England ; which, instead of enlighten- 
ing, does, as far as it has any power, keep the people in 
ignorance ; which, instead of cherishing notions of liberty 
tends to the making of the people slaves ; and which, in- 
stead of being their guardian, is the most efficient instru- 
ment in the hands of all those who oppress, or who wish 
to oppress them."* Cobbett had such contempt for the 
writers on the daily and weekly press, that he once ex- 
pressed a wish to see the whole crew drawn up in a 
row in Hyde Park, in order that the public might see 
"what a mean, rascally, shabby, and despicable set of 
wretches undertook to dhect public opinion." 

* Selections from Political Works, Vol. III., p. 143. 

19 



How to Live in a Prison. 137 

CHAPTER XVI. 

HOW TO LIVE IN A PRISON. 

As CoBBETT liad always been fond of agricultural pur- 
suits, and as he liad for some time been prosperous in his 
printing and pubhshing enterprises, he had bought, as we 
have seen, an estate at Botley, near Southampton. This 
estate consisted of a large house in the village of Botley, 
and the two farms called Fairthorn and Eaglington, with 
two other smaller ones. " He had determined on leading 
a country life," say his sons, "and had taken all the 
means to do so, when the government prosecution was 
begun ; and, as a considerable purchase, such as he had 
made, pai'tly upon the faith of the profits of his literary 
labors, requii-ed more than ordinary exertion and care, the 
reader can imagine, better than we can describe, how 
ruinous his mere absence from home was at this time." 
Everything was unsettled; all his plans and prospects 
were deranged ; and he had to make what arrangements 
he could for the management of his affairs by others. 
With his bookselling business in London, with the various 
works he was editing and publishing besides the Register, 
with his sowing and planting and cattle-raising and dog- 
breeding, he was a busy man at this time, and could ill 
afford to be shut up and kept away from everything in 
which he had such deep interest. He did, it seems, offer 
the government to suppress the Register altogether, if 
they would revoke the sentence of imprisonment. But in 
vain; they were thirsting for vengeance, and nothing 
else would satisfy them. Of this offer, I shall have some- 
thing to say by and by. When he saw no escape from the 
dire ordeal, he went bravely to work, and made the most 
he could of a desperate state of things; in fact, it is 
wonderful how much he did under such unpromising 



138 Life of William Cohhett. 

circumstances. The Eegister he continued to edit from 
his prison. He often wrote when surrounded by his chil- 
dren, who frequently visited him, and he never composed 
with greater pleasure, or was more delighted, than when 
they made the loudest noise or played the wildest pranks 
around him. The picture that he himself gives of his 
prison-life finely illustrates his character as a father and 
husband; for notwithstanding the bitter war he carried 
on against the government and its agents, all was peace, 
affection, and harmony in his family. He was loved to 
adoration by his children, whom he brought up in a sin- 
gularly primitive sort of manner, never teaching them 
their letters until they had learned all the operations of 
farming, as well as hunting, shooting, and the like ; and 
when they had leai'ned all these things, he taught them to 
read and to write by an ingenious method of his own. 

"It was in the month of July," he says, "when that 
horrible sentence was passed upon me. My wife, having 
left her children in the care of her good and aifectionate 
sister, was in London, waiting to know the doom of her 
husband. When the news arrived at Botley, the three 
boys, one eleven, another nine, and the other seven years 
old, were hoeing cabbages in that garden which had been 
the source of so much delight. When the account of the 
savage sentence was brought to them, the youngest could 
not, for some time, be made to understand what a jail 
was, and when he did, he, all in a tremor, exclaimed: 
' Now, I'm B\yre, William, that Papa is not in a place like 
that!' The other, in order to disguise his tears and 
smother his sobs, fell to work with the hoe, and chopped 
about like a blind person. This account, when it reached 
me, affected me more, filled me with deeper resentment, 
than any other circumstance. 

"Now, then, the book-learning wsls forced upon us. I 
had a farm in hand. It was necessary that I should be 
constantly informed of what was doing. I gave all the 



How to Live in a J^rison. 139 

orders, whether as to pvu'chases, sales, ploughing, sowing 
breeding; in short, in regard to everything; and the 
things were endless in number and variety, and always 
full of interest. My eldest son and daughter could now 
write well and fast. One OT the other of these was 
always at Botley ; and I had with me (having hired the 
best part of the keeper's house) one or two, besides either 
this brother or sister; the mother coming up to town 
about once in two or three months, leaving the house 
and the children in the care of her sister. We had a 
HAMPER, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a 
week, or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country 
fare ; for the carriage of which, cost free, I was indebted 
to as good a man as ever God created, the late Mr. George 
Rogers, of Southampton. This hamper, which was always, 
at both ends of the line, looked for with the most lively 
feelings, became our school. It brought me a journal of 
labors, proceedings and occurrences, wi'itten on paper of 
shape and size uniform, and so contrived, as to margins, 
as to admit of binding. The journal used, when my son 
was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings of our 
dogs, colts, or anything that he wanted me to have a cor- 
rect idea of. The hamper brought me plants, bulbs, and 
the like, that I might see the size of them ; and always 
every one sent his or her most beautiful fioioers j the 
eai'hest violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and blue- 
bells; the earUest twigs of trees; and, in short, every- 
thing that they deemed calculated to delight me. The 
moment the hamper arrived, I, casting aside everything 
else, set to work to answer every question, to give new 
directions, and to add everytliing likely to give pleasure 
at Botley. Every hamper brought one ' letter,' as they 
called it, if not more, from every child; and to every 
letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, 
beiag sure that that was the way to produce other and 
better letters; for, though they could not read what I 



140 Life of William Cobhett. 

wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere 
scratches, and afterwards, for a while, of a few words 
written down for them to imitate, I always thanked them 
for their '■pretty letter,'' and never expressed any wish to 
see them V3rite better ; but took care to write in a very 
neat and plain hand myself, and to do up my letter in a 
very neat manner. Thus, while the ferocious tigers [who 
condemned him] thought I was doomed to incessant 
mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental 
powers, I found in my children, and in their spotless 
and courageous and afi'ectionate mother, delights to 
which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers." 

But the more serious occupation of Cobbett, apart from 
his articles for the Register, was the writing of his 
famous book, " Paper against Gold." He thus describes, 
in one of his public letters to Lord Brougham, the incep- 
tion of that work: "The next day after Gibbs, Ellen- 
borough, and their associates, had got me safe in Newgate, 
an American friend of mine, who had the clearest and 
soundest head of almost any man I ever knew in my hfe, 
and for whom I had, and still have, a very great personal 
regard, came to see me in a very miserable hole, though 
better than that to which I had been sentenced, and from 
which I finally ransomed myself, at the expense, for lodg- 
ing alone, of twelve Mtndred pounds. Being seated, one 
of us on each side of a little bit of a table, he said, look- 
ing up into my face, with his arms folded upon the edge 
of the table, ' Well, they have got you, at last. And now, 
what will you do ? ' After a moment or two, T answered, 
' "What do you think I ought to do ? ' He then gave me 
his opinion, and entered pretty much into a sort of plan 
of proceedings. 

"I heard him out, and then I spoke to him in much 
about these words: 'No, Dickins, that will never do. 
This nation is drunk ; it is mad as a March hare, and mad 
it will be till this beastly frolic (the war against Napoleon) 



IIov) to Ziive ill a J^riso?i. 141 

is over. The only mode of proceeding, in order to get 
satisfaction, reqiiii'es great patience. The nation must 
suffer at last, and greatly and dreadfully suffer, and in 
that suffering it will come to its senses, and to that jus- 
tice of sentiment which is now wholly banished. I shall 
make no immediate impression by tracing the paper-sys- 
tem to its deadly root. The common people will stare at 
me, and the lich ruffians will sneer ; but the time must come 
when all will listen; and my plan is to vjrite that noio 
which I can hold up to the teeth of my insolent enemies 
and taunt them with in the hour of their distress.' — 'Aye,' 
said he, 'but the inornis may be taunting you before that 
time.' — 'No matter,' said I, 'for though fame, after the 
worms have been at work, is a foolish thing, you must 
recollect that I have no other line to pursue. By pursuing 
this, I seciu-e a chance of final success and satisfaction, 
and by no other can I perceive a possibility of obtaining 
even that chance.' I then desciibed to him the outline of 
what I intended to do with regard to the paper-system, 
and after passing a very pleasant afternoon, diuing which 
we selected and rejected several titles, we at last fixed 
upon that of '■Paper against Gold,'' which I began to 
wi'ite and to publish a few weeks afterwards, and which, 
at the end of thii'teen years, I hold up to the noses of the 
insolent foes who then exulted over me, and tell them, 
'This is what you got by my having been sentenced to 
Newgate ; this is the produce of that deed by which it 
was hoped and beheved that I was pressed down, never to 
be able to sth- again.' . . . This was a new epoch in 
the progress of my mind. I now bent my whole force to 
one object, regardmg every thing else as of no conse- 
quence at all. The pursuits of agriculture and gai'dening 
filled up the moments of mere leism-e and relaxation. 
Other topics than that of paper-money came now and 
then to make a variety ; but this was the main thing ; I 
never had any hope in anything else; and nothing else 



14:2 Life of William Oohhett. 

was an object of my care. Whether I were rich or poor 
I cared not a straw. I never cared in my life how I ate, 
drank, or slept. I had Newgate in my recollection and 
the paper-money for my polar star." 

Cobbett's imprisonment was not without its fruits : it 
shortened the life of the brutal practice of flogging, not 
only in England, but in the United States. " What came 
of it all?" says Mr. Edward Smith. "In the first place, 
before Mr. Cobbett was released, flogging had become so 
discredited as to be nearly in desuetude, as regards the 
British army. Secondly, the degrading practice was 
totally abolished in the United States army, by Act of 
Congress of April 10th, 1812." 

While in prison, Cobbett was visited by a great num- 
ber of persons, who regarded him as suffering in the 
cause of public liberty. During the two years, he was 
visited by persons, whom he had never seen before, fi'om 
197 cities and towns in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
the larger number of whom came to him as the deputies 
of some society, club, or circle of people, in their respect- 
ive places of residence. " I had the infinite satisfaction," 
he says, " to learn from the gentlemen who thus visited 
me, that my writings had induced those who had read 
them to think. This fact, indeed, of being visited by per- 
sons from almost every considerable town in the kingdom, 
speaks a language that cannot be misunderstood." Yet 
his enemies never ceased firing away at him, even in 
prison. He was annoyed by various squibs and satires ; 
"one villain, whose name was Gillray," caricatured him 
standing before the bars of his jail. 

His friends offered to raise a penny subscription for 
him in order to defray his expenses. This he refused, 
desiring them rather to buy the sets of his Register which 
he had still on hand. Few, however, availed themselves 
of this offer, as the sets were expensive, twenty-five and a 
half guineas each. He acted unwisely in refusing the 



IIov) to Live in a Prison. 143 

penny subscription, which would no doubt have been 
qiute as successful as was that for his friend Lord Coch- 
rane, and would probably have covered all his expenses, 
including the twelve hundred pounds to the jailer. Cob- 
bett evidently disliked receiving money without giving 
any equivalent for it, and much prefen-ed selling his 
wares to receiving a gratuity. 

Thus the two years of his prison-life were spent in 
editing his paper, -vsT^-iting his book on jjaper-money, ad- 
vocating measures of reform, exposing and denouncing his 
enemies and then- measures, managing his farm, educating 
his childi'en, and showing the kindest and gentlest atten- 
tions to all the members of his family, whose thoughts were 
only of him and of what would be pleasing to him. In 
public life he was exacting, severe, domineering ; in pri- 
vate hfe kind, affable, indulgent. This man of battle, this 
undaunted fighter, who loved nothing better than a tussle 
with his enemies, who dared the whole power of the 
British government, and openly defied the prejudices of 
the people and the hostility of powerful ecclesiastical and 
political organizations, displayed a mindfulness of those 
whom he loved worthy of the gentlest natui'e. So re- 
gai'dful was he of his wife, who was constitutionally timid 
and especially afraid of thunder-storms, that whenever 
he saw a storm approaching while he was absent from 
home, he used to di'op whatever he had in hand, and 
hasten home as fast as he could. So that his French 
friends used to say, when he made an appointment with 
one of them, and declared that he would be punctually 
on hand at a given time and place, " Sauve le tonnerre, 
Monsieur Cobbett! " (Except it thunders, Mr. Cobbett!) 
He speaks of his wife as "a companion who, though 
deprived of all opportunity of acquii'ing what is called 
learning, had so much good sense, so much useful 
knowledge, was so innocent, so just in all her ways, so 



144 Life of William Cohhett. 

pure in thought, word, and deed, so disinterested, so 
generous, so devoted to me and her children, so free from 
all disguise, and, withal, so beautiful and so talkative, 
and in a voice so sweet, so cheering, that I must, seeing 
the health and the capacity which it had pleased God to 
give me, have been a criminal, if I had done much less 
than that which I have done; and I have always said, 
that if my country felt any gratitude for my labors, that 
gratitude is due to her, full as much as to me." How 
many men, in these days of divorces and matrimonial 
wrangles, can boast of such a wife? And how many 
wives can boast of such a husband, so mindful of them as 
to drop everything and make for home on the approach 
of a thunder-storm? One cannot help thinking of the 
circumstance, that the thoughts and feelings of this well- 
mated pair must have instinctively turned towards each 
other during every thunder-storm that occtured while 
the one was held fast within the strong walls of that 
terrible old Newgate prison. 



His Return to Botley. 145 



PAI^T III. 

Frcm Cobbett's Release fkom Newgate, 1812, till his 
X Death, 1835. 

CHAPTER I. 

HIS eeturn to botley. 

On his liberation from prison, Cobbett was not a little 
gi'atified and consoled by the manner in which he was 
received by the people of Hampshu'e and his neighbors 
in Botley. At one of the towns on his way home, he was 
met by gentlemen who had come thu-ty mUes to see him, 
and on his approach to Botley the young men di'ew him 
in his carnage for more than a mile. " "Wlien we got into 
Botley," he says, " about nine o'clock in the evening of 
the 11th of July, there was a sight for Su' Vicary Gibbs 
and Lord Ellenborough, and his brother judges, to see. 
The inhabitants of the village gathered round me; the 
young men, and the boys, and theii fathers and mothers, 
listening to the account of the cause of my absence; 
hearing me speak of the local militia and the German 
troops at the town of Ely ; heai'ing me call upon fathers 
and mothers to reflect on what I said, and on tlieu' sons 
to beai* it in mind to the last horn* of their lives. In 
short, the thing ended precisely as it ought to end, in a 
plain appeal to the rmderstanding of a village ; to young 
country men and boys, and their fathers and mothers. 

"To express my feelings on this occasion," he con- 
tinues, " is quite impossible. Suffice it to say that the 
good behavior, the civility and kindness of all the 
7 



146 Lvfe of William Cobbett. 

people of the village to my family diu'iiig my absence, 
and tlieir most affectionate reception of myself at my 
return, will never be effaced from my recollection. If 
I had wanted a motive to love my country, here 
would have been motive sufficient. That nation can- 
not be otherwise than good, where the inhabitants of a 
whole parish are so honest, so just and so kind. For my 
part, born and bred amongst the farmers and laborers of 
England, I have ever entertained towards them feelings 
of kindness ; but I have now to add the feeling of grati- 
tude, and of that feeling I shall, I hope, never fail to give 
proof, when it is in my power to defend any of my poorer 
neighbors against the oppressions of the more powerful." 

We shall see that this was not a vain promise, but was 
repeatedly fulfilled to the letter in his subsequent career. 

Whenever there are two statements, one by Cobbett 
and another by somebody else, even by an enemy, Mr. 
Watson prefers the latter. After quoting the above ac- 
count of his reception at Botley, he gives us a story of a 
different kind from the Thnes, the " bloody old Times,'''' 
as Cobbett used to call it, which was always dead against 
him. The hostile spirit of this account is apparent on 
the face of it. The Times' reporter asserts that Cobbett's 
agent had, some days previous to his return, endeavored 
to stir up the rustics by announcing that four half hogs- 
heads of ale would be given away when he came back ; that 
this agent endeavored to get the church-bells rung, but 
was refused the keys of the church by the rector ; that the 
young men would not have drawn the carriage if it were 
not for the promised ale, for the sake of which they took 
on them,selves the character of beasts ; that some of the 
rector's party declared they did not know which had more 
of the beast, those who dragged or he who was di'agged ; 
that the procession was composed of persons of the 
loioest character ; that Cobbett made a speech, upon which 
his agent and his followers, athirst for the ale, shouted; 



A J*\ilse IStep and its Consequences. 147 

that the affaii' ended with a riot — what we should proba- 
bly call a revel or a spree — wliich lasted till Sunday morn- 
ing, and to which the constables were compelled to put 
an end. 

Now anybody can see the animus of the writer of this 
accomit; and yet Mi'. Watson, comparing it with Cob- 
bett's, says, it " made his entrance into Botley appear of 
another character, %oMch has generally been thought viuch 
nearer the truth.'''' Generally been thought? By whom? 
By Mr. Watson, by his enemies, by the government peo- 
ple, and the T'mies people, who never missed an oppor- 
timity to ridicule and pervert and travesty everything he 
said or did. One cannot help saying to Mr. Watson 
something like what the little judge said to Sam Weller: 
" You must not tell us what you or anybody else thought, 
SU-; it is not evidknce." How groundless are Mi-. Watson's 
chai'ges ! and how evident it is, that his aim was to under- 
mine Cobbett's character and destroy all confidence in his 
words ! 



CHAPTER II. 

A FALSE STEP AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

Cobbett's friends celebrated his liberation by a dinner 
at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, at which Sii" Francis 
Biu'dett presided. There were six hundi-ed j)ersons jji-es- 
ent at this dinner, most of them the liberal, progressive, 
reforming sj)mts of the day. But there were some other 
spirits of a different character : the government still had 
their eyes on him, and sent their emissaries there ; and 
the Times, which was hand in glove with the government, 
had its emissaries there too. 

"At the tavern-door," says Mr. Watson, "as the guests 
entered, handbills were delivered to them, refeiTing them 



148 Life of William Cobhett. 

to a letter in the Times, signed, 'A Fellow-Sufferer from 
unjust Persecution,' in which various charges were made 
against Cobbett's political conduct and general dealings 
with his supporters and the public. It was there shown 
how he had formerly censured and ridiculed Su' Francis 
Burdett, whom he was now praising and flattering ; and 
how he had contradicted himself on other subjects. It was 
shown that, after having made a large sum of money by 
his Register, and being in possession of ample means to 
pay his fine, he had sought to elicit unnecessary contri- 
butions from his readers and supporters, endeavoring to 
force on them the pirrchase of surplus copies of that pub- 
lication by the sale of which he had akeady so largely 
profited. It was also charged that, at the time of his last 
trial, between the day of his conviction and that of pro- 
nouncing the judgment, he had made an offer to the 
government to discontinue his Register^ on condition that 
he should be pardoned ; and it was only because this offer 
had no effect that he continued to publish the Register. 

" "When his health was drunk as ' an able advocate of 
parliamentary reform, and zealous opposer of the flog- 
ging system,' Cobbett had to make a speech. He dwelt at 
much length on what he had suffered from the prosecu- 
tion. His change of tone with regard to Sir Francis 
Bm'dett he justifisd on many grounds which he had dis- 
covered for altering his opinions respecting that honorable 
baronet and the prmciples which he advocated. As to 
discontinuing the Register, he had contemplated doing 
so, he said, because he was afraid of being unable to write 
with the freedom which he had previously exercised, and 
was tmwniing to address the public in a lower strain. — 
But there was a party in the room whom these observa- 
tions did not satisfy. One of the company, who did not 
give his name at first, but afterwards said it was OoUier. 
remarked that Cobbett had made no specific answer to 
the two principal charges against him ; first, that he ' had 



A False Step and its Consequences. 149 

unwortliily and indii'ectly attempted to raise a sum of 
money from the public, to defray the expenses of his 
trial, when the public had akeady aided him fully to sus- 
tain them ; ' and, secondly, that he had offered to discon- 
tinue his Eegister for the purpose of inducing the Court 
of King's Bench to mitigate the sentence about to be 
passed upon him.' His object was, he said, to ascertain 
fi'om Mr. Cobbett, by his dii-ect contradiction of these 
accusations, that he still continued true to the cause of 
the people.' Cobbett replied that it was unfair to charge 
him with endeavoiing to procure money by unworthy 
means merely because he had, when hving at an extraor- 
dinary expense, offered his own property for sale; and 
that as to discontinuing the Eegister, he had never made 
any such proposition to the government as that which 
was imputed to him, nor had he ever received any such 
jDroposition from the government ; nor had he ever had a 
thought of ceasing to wiite on any such condition as that 
which had been mentioned. This declaration was fol- 
lowed by a gTeat uproar, some applauding Cobbett and 
some decrying him ; and it is certain that a large portion 
of the company still remained unconvinced by his pro- 
testations. The truth is, that his censors had got hold of 
a copy of an address ' To the Readers of the Register,' 
which he had actually written and printed for insertion in 
it, at the time of his conviction, stating, that the number 
in which it would appear would be the last. The motives 
there intunated for the discontinuance of the Register 
were such as he alleged in his speech at the dinner ; but 
the authors of the handbills cii-culated against him de- 
clared that he did not write the address till he erroneously 
thought he had made his peace with Ministers." 

Does not all this look as if Cobbett had got into a 
"coiu't to try him for dishonorable practices, instead of a 
company of fiiends to compliment him for honorable 
•ones ? The whole thmg seems to have been a trap, cai'e- 



150 Life of William Cobbett. 

fully set to catch him ; for he certainly had more enemies 
than friends at this dinner, and enemies, too, of the most 
despicable character. Could there be anything more 
meanly treacherous than this delivery of hostile hand- 
bills into the hands of the guests as they entered the 
door ? Wliat should we think of people who, at a dinner 
given to Mr. Evarts, or Mr. Schiu'z, slipped handbills 
containing hostile and damaging statements concerning 
them into the hands of the friends they were about to 
meet? Even the Tweed gang could hardly have done 
anything more contemptibly base. It is on a par with 
the whole conduct of the government of that day; a 
sneaking, conscienceless crew, who feared Cobbett, and 
scrupled at no means, however base, of injuring him. 

Unfortunately, one of these statements concerning 
Cobbett was, it seems, true ; and although in itself the 
fact which he denied was by no means dishonorable, he 
made a grave mistake, nay he acted very wrongly, un- 
wisely, and xmfairly in denying it. I refer to the accusa- 
tion of his having offered the government to discontinue 
his paper in exchange for his freedom. It is obvious 
from the above account of his speeches at this dinner, 
that he never iyitended denying it (for he, at the outset, 
frankly confesses having contemplated discontinuing the 
Register) until his accuser or cross-questioner twisted it 
into a test as to whether he still remained faithful to the 
cause of the people or not; whereupon Cobbett, taken 
suddenly and without a moment for reflection, fell into 
the trap set for him. No doubt he had never intended to 
surrender to the government ; and that is what he meant 
to say; but the offer to discontinue his paper in ex- 
change for his liberty was a fact. 

The charge was subsequently repeated by others, and 
he denied it again in his letter to Mr, Bose in 1817. 
"What did take place just before he was brought up for 
judgment, he relates as follows in that letter: "The 



A False Step and its Conseqtoences. 151 

grounds of the cliarge are as follows : a few days bolore 
I was brought up for judgment I went home to pass the 
remaining short space of personal freedom with my 
famUy. I had just begun farming, and also planting 
trees, with the hope of seeing them grow up as my chil- 
dren grew. I had a daughter fifteen years of age, whose 
birthday was just then approachuig — and, destined to 
be one of the happiest and one of the most unhappy 
days of my life — on that day my dreadful sentence was 
passed. I had one son eleven yeai-s old, another nine 
yeai'S old, another six years old ; one daughter five years 
old, another three years old, and another child nearly at 
hand. You and Perceval might have laughed at all this ; 
it was yom- turn to laugh then ; but the public will easily 
beheve that, under the apprehensions of an absence of 
years, and the great chance of loss of health, if not of 
life, in a prison, all this produced nothing Hke laughter at 
Botley. It was at this crisis, no matter by what feelings 
actuated, that I wrote to my attorney, Mr. White, in 
Essex street, to make the proposition above stated. But 
fits of fear and despair* have never been of long duration in 
my family. The letter was hardly got to the post-office at 
Southampton before the courage of my wife and eldest 
daughter retiu-ned. Indignation and resentment took 
the place of grief and alarm, and they cheerfully con- 
sented to my stoppmg the letter. Mr. Peter Pinnerty 
was at my house at the time ; a post-chaise was got, and 
he came off to London diu'ing the night, and prevented 
Mr. W I lite from acting on the letter. . . . Now Mr. 
Pinnerty, whom I have not had the pleasure to see for 
some years, is alive and in London. Mi'. White is also 
ahve. The public will be sure that I shovdd not dare to 
have made the above statement if it had not been true to 
the very letter." 

But it seems that he made another offer, tkrough an- 
other person, after this countermanded one ; and although 



152 Life of 'William Cohbett. 

it came out eight years afterwards, I must liere dispose 
of it at once. Cobbett had an assistant and partner in 
his printing and publishing business, a gentleman named 
Wright, who had been with him for many years. When 
Cobbett had to go to prison, a division of their property 
became necessary. Cobbett disputed Wright's demands ; 
an accountant was consulted, and (according to Mr. Wat- 
son) this accountant reduced a claim of Cobbett's of 
twelve thousand pounds to six. This created a mortal 
enmity between the two; Cobbett attacked Wright at 
different times, and in 1820 that gentleman brought suit 
against him for various libelous utterances concerning 
him. Wright recovered a thousand pounds damages and 
forty shillings costs, which sum, as Cobbett at that time 
had lost nearly every penny he possessed, was paid by 
that excellent man who had been so friendly to him whUe 
in prison — Mr. George Rogers, of Southampton. The 
name of such a friend is well worthy of remembrance 
In this suit, it was shown that, in the interval between 
the conviction and the passing of sentence (15th of June 
tm 9th of July, 1810), Cobbett had written to Mr. John 
Reeves of the Alien office — the same gentleman who pre- 
sented his " Important Considerations' to the government 
in 1803 — requesting him to treat with the government for 
the discontinuance of the Register on condition of a par- 
don being granted. He also sent to Mr. Reeves a state- 
ment of his claims for indulgence and a copy of a farewell 
address to the public on laying down the Register. His 
offer was refused. Mr. Perceval would not listen to any- 
thing short of imprisonment; so Cobbett wrote to Mr. 
Wright to suppress the farewell address and to go on 
with the Register.* 

This was the address which his enemies at the Crown 
and Anchor had got hold of, and which Cobbett thought 

* Watson's Biography of Cobbett, p. 339. 



Confession the Only Salvation. 153 

was fm*nislied to them and the Tbnes by the treachery of 
Wright. They may have got it from one of the ministers ; 
but it matters little from whom they got it; what we 
have to consider is the denial of the fact itself, which 
caused Cobbett great annoyance, great loss of reputation, 
and great damage in every Avay. 



CHAPTEK III. 

CONFESSION THE ONLY SALVATION. THE CLEKGYIVIAN AND THE 

STATESMA.N. 

It is remarkable that so able a man could not see that 
there was much more danger in denying than in confess- 
ing his error, if it may be called such. The only disgrace 
was in the denial ; the act was not disgi-aceful ; nor would 
sensible people have thought less of him if he had con- 
fessed the truth. Let us suppose him to have said; 
" Yes, gentlemen, it is true, I did this thing ; and after I 
have told you why, you will not perhaps consider it such 
a villainous transaction as some of you now seem to do. 
With my printing and publishing and farming enterprises 
all threatened with ruin ; Avdth my helpless little ones all 
clinging to me as if they were never to see me again, and 
lamenting as if their heai'ts would break — for I had been 
then* friend and teacher as well as theii' bread-winner — 
with my wife in a very dehcate state of health ; with a 
whole houseful of people entirely dependent on me ; mth 
the prospects of the loss of the fruits of all my labor for 
years, and of being hiu'ried away from all that was dear 
to me in the woi-ld and shut up among felons ; with all 
this before me, is it astonishing that I should have made 
an attempt, a perfectly fair* and honorable attempt, to 
espape such a fate ? What did I do *? I offered to give 
7* 



154 Life of William Oobbett. 

up my paper ; not my principles. Had I not a right to 
do this"? Was there anything dishonest or base in this? 
I was under no obhgation to continue to write; I had 
always given my subscribers their money's worth, and I 
would not have allowed them to lose a farthing. The 
country had done nothing for me. I was in no way bound 
to sacrifice myself and family if I could avoid it. I was 
in the state of a soldier surrounded by an irresistible 
enemy ; and has a soldier so situated ever been ashamed 
to ask his life, and to accept of it, upon the conditions of 
not serving again during the war ?" Had he spoken thus, 
as he subsequently did, in effect, in his letter to Mr. Rose, 
would any sensible man have condemned him for his act? 
But the fact is, as I have above indicated, he seems to 
have been taken unawares, to have fallen into a trap ex- 
pressly laid for him, and committed an error, which even 
he, strong man as he was, was afterward ashamed to 
confess. 

The confession of a fault, instead of degrading, raises 
the confessor of it in the estimation of his fellow-men. 
While it requires coiu-age and manliness to confess a 
fault, it is an indication of cowardice and weakness to 
deny it. I am convinced that in the case, for instance, of 
two celebrated Americans, the one an eloquent and dis- 
tinguished clergyman, once admired and esteemed by the 
whole nation as perhaps its greatest representative pulpit- 
orator ; the other an able statesman and effective speaker ; 
a man who had been honored with almost the highest 
ofiices in the gift of the people, and who had enjoyed 
almost universal respect and popularity ; I am convinced 
that in the case of these two men, — both of whom have 
been tried for crime, and acquitted in a peculiar manner, 
yet both of whom are supposed by the world in general 
to be guilty, — I am confident that the whole world would, 
had they frankly confessed their sin on the day of trial, 
forgiven them for the sake of the frankness and manliness 



Confession the Only Salvation. 155 

of the confession ; and instead of remaining forever under 
a cloud, and being universally regarded with distrust and 
suspicion; instead of having the finger of scorn con- 
stantly pointed at them, and being a standing target for 
scoffers and satu'ists, they would, I think, be regarded 
with indulgent and not unkindly feelings by the majority 
of then- countrymen, and perhaps trusted as much as they 
had ever been before. And from what oceans of misery, 
" regi'et, remorse, and shame," the men themselves would 
have been saved, had they in the first instance told the 
plain, simjDle truth ! 

Cobbett, however, had committed no crime in offering 
to discontinue his paper ; the offer was perfectly harm- 
less in itself ; his offence was in the denying of the offer. 
It was a blunder, a criminal blunder, if you j)lease ; but 
it is eA'ident that, in making the statement he did, he 
never could have intended uttering a dehberate falsehood, 
a falsehood by which no possible advantage could be 
gained, nor any good of any kind seciu'ed to himself or 
others ; a falsehood so comj)letely senseless and aimless 
that none but a fool could have intentionally committed 
it. The tenor of Cobbett's whole life prevents us from 
supposing him guilty of a deliberate falsehood; and m 
this case, it seems evident that he was, in the heat and 
excitement of the moment, simply entrapped into making 
a statement which was not true, or not strictly true, and 
he foohshly stuck to it, having once made it. His con- 
duct, therefore, w^as weak, eiToneous, blameworthy, seri- 
ously blameworthy ; but it was not of that black nature 
characteristic of a man of falsehood ; it was not so terribly 
black as Mr. Watson makes it. It hui't nobody but him- 
self ; it was indeed disastrous to his own reputation ; for 
it caused him much trouble, vexation, and loss of fiiends, 
and became a standing reproach to him for the rest of his 
life. Like all deviations from the straight line of recti- 
tude, the evil consequences fell mainly upon himself. 



156 Life of William, Cohhett. 

The chief use of biography is to learn wisdom from the 
blunders, the errors, and foibles of others ; and the lesson 
to be learned from this episode in the life of Cobbett is, 
especially to the young, a very important one: that a 
falsehood of any kind is a fatal error ; that we must never, 
under any circumstances, deviate from the simple, plain 
truth; that we must never allow ourselves to be even 
entrapped into a He ; and that we must ever scorn false- 
hood, as mean and contemptible ; ever 

" Dare to be true, for nothing can need a lie : 
A fault wliicii needs it most, grows two thereby." 



CHAPTEK IV. 

THE UNHAPPY YEAB 1817- SILENCE, A DUNGEON, OR EXILE. 

Cobbett now became doubly active, and sought every 
jDOSsible means of defeating the measures and exposing 
the injustice and tyranny of the ministry that had shown 
him so Httle mercy. It was something he never forgot 
or forgave ; something which he told wherever and when- 
ever he thought it suitable; something the authors of 
which he held up to contempt and execration on all occa- 
sions. He reduced the price of his Register, and called 
into existence his famous Twopenny Trash ; a name given 
by Lord Castlereagh to his cheap newspapers, and which, 
like the significant name given him in America, he imme- 
diately adopted. He became so busy issuing various 
books and publications, that, as he himself maintained, 
the government actually passed a law, or a number of 
laws, called the Six Acts, in order to reach and silence 
him. " The idea of publishing cheap newspapers under 
the title of Twopenny Trash," says Sir Henry Bulwer, 
"and which, not appearing as periodicals, escaped the 



The Unhappy Year 1817. 157 

Stamp Act, now added considerably to his power, and by 
extending the cii'culation of his writings to a new class, — 
the mechanic and artisan in urban populations, — made 
that power dangerous at a period when great distress 
produced general discontent — a discontent of which the 
government rather tried to suppress the exhibition than 
to remove the causes. Nor did Cobbett speak untruly 
when he said, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
and the passing of the celebrated Six Acts were more 
directed against himself than against all the other writers 
of sedition put together." 

This was the unhappy year 1817 — a year marked by 
extreme misery and distress among the people, and con- 
sequently by riots and distvu-bances, and by all manner of 
unwise repressive measures on the part of the govern- 
ment. The ruling class, the aristocracy and the fund- 
holders, now dreaded a rising of their own countrymen 
more seriously than they ever dreaded an invasion of the 
French, and thought their only safety lay in extreme meas- 
ures of repression and restriction. So that, to use Cob- 
bett's words, " with a press under the superintendence of 
the magistrates; with an old treason bill revived; with 
the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, in time of profound 
peace ; with legions of paupers, and millions in a state of 
starvation ; with commerce, manufactures, and agricviltvire 
ruined ; with all these notoriously existing," the weak and 
cowardly government of the day could find no cui-e for 
existing evils but repression and restriction. They hated 
the Reformers, whom they fooHshly looked upon as the 
originators of the disturbances and discontents in the 
coxintry, and the cause of all the evils they had to fear ; 
and it was in order to get them into their power, that 
they had the Habeas Corpus Act suspended. 

As soon as this Act was suspended, and the Six Acts 
were passed, Cobbett saw plainly that he would have to 
make up his mind to accept of one of three evils : silence, 



158 Life of William Cohhett. 

a dungeon, or exile. Unfortunately, he chose the last; 
he made up his mind to take up his residence, for a time, 
in a country where he could enjoy freedom of speech and 
of action, and from which he intended to transmit, if pos- 
sible, his thoughts to England for publication. Had the 
Atlantic telegraph been in existence at that time, his plan 
would no doubt have been altogether successful ; but with 
no quicker means of conveying his thoughts to England 
than by slow-going sailing-vessels, it could not be other 
than a failure ; for his thoughts came too late ; he was 
striking the iron after it had cooled. "With his views, he 
would, I think, have done far better to have gone over to 
France or to Holland. 

Like the German Sociahsts lately landed on our 
shores, driven from their native land by the gagging 
laws of Bismarck, Cobbett was driven out by the gagging 
bills of Castlereagh and Sidmouth, who were determined 
to suppress hostile criticisms by every means in their 
power. Had he remained, imprisonment would certainly 
have been his fate; for he never could have held his 
tongue while witnessing the boundless folly and cruelty 
of the actions of these men. The Constitution of Eng- 
land may be summed up thus : " Everything is allowed ; 
except the following ;" while these wise statesmen were 
doing their utmost to make it like that of Prussia, which 
may be summed up thus: "Everything is forbidden; 
except the following." 

So, after writing a farewell address to the people of 
England, which he dictated on the evening before his 
departm-e, at the Register office in London, and in which 
he gives all his reasons for the step he was taking, he 
left London for Liverpool at five o'clock on the mornuig 
of the 22d of March, 1817, and on the 27th took passage 
on board of an American vessel bound for New York. 
He was accompanied by his two sons, William and John, 
and made arrangements for the remainder of his family 



CohJ>eU''s Takbuj Ledve of his Couuti-i/vi^en. 159 

to follow liiiu ill the autumn. He reached New York 
May 5th, 1817, after a voyage of forty days. 



CHAPTER V. 

COBBETT's taking leave bF HIS COUNTRYMEN. 

This was such an important step in his career; its 
results were so serious, financially as well as politically : 
his reasons for it have been so strongly disputed, and his 
assertions concerning it so positively denied ; that I con- 
sider it necessary, first, to let him give his own accomit 
of the matter, and then notice what Mi'. Watson considers 
"the true reasons for his esca^ye to America." In the 
fai-ewell addi'ess above alluded to, he thus describes his 
position : 

"My BELOVED Countrymen, — Soon after this reaches 
your eyes, those of the writer will, possibly, have taken 
the last glimpse of the land that gave them birth, the 
land in which his parents lie bui'ied, the land of which 
he has always been so proud, the land in which he leaves 
a people whom he shall, to his last breath, love and 
esteem beyond all the rest of mankind. 

" Everyone, if he can do it without wrong to another, 
has a right to pursue the path to his own happiness ; as 
my hax)piness, however, has long been inseparable from 
the hope of assisting in restoring the rights and liberties 
of my country, nothing could have induced me to quit 
that country while there remained the smallest chance of 
my being able, by remaining, to continue to aid her cause. 
No such chance is now left. The laws which have just 
been passed, especially if we take into view the real ob- 
jects of those laws, forbid us to entertain the idea, that it 
would be possible to write on political subjects according 



160 Life of William Cobbett. 

to the dictates of truth and reason, without drawing down 
on our heads certain and swift destruction. It was well 
observed by Mr. Brougham, in a late debate, that every 
writer who opposes the present measures ' must now feel 
that he sits down to write with a halter about his neck,'' 
— an observation the justice of which must be obvious to 
all the world. 

"Leaving, therefore, all considerations of personal 
interest, personal feeling, and personal safety; leaving 
even the peace of mind of a numerous and most affec- 
tionate family wholly out of view, I have reasoned thus 
with myself. What is now left to be done ! We have 
urged our claims with so much truth; we have estab- 
lished them so clearly on the gromid of both law and 
reason, that there is no answer to be found other than 
that of a suspension of our personal safety. If I still 
write in support of those claims, I must be blind not to 
see that a dungeon is my doom. If I write at all, and do 
not write in support of those claims, I not only degrade 
myself, but I do a great mjury to the rights of the nation 
by appearing to abandon them. If I remain here, I must 
therefore cease to write, either from compulsion or from a 
sense of duty to my countrymen ; therefore, it is impos- 
sible to do any good to the cause of my country by 
remaining in it ; but, if I remove to a country where I 
can vnite with perfect freedom, it is not only possible, 
but very probable, that I shall, sooner or later, be able to 
render that cause important and lasting services. 

" Upon this conclusion it is that I have made my deter- 
mination; for though life would be scarcely worth pre- 
serving with the consciousness that I walked about my 
fields, or slept in my bed, merely at the mercy of a Secre- 
tary of State ; though, under such circumstances, neither 
the song of the birds in spring nor the well-strawed 
homestead in winter could make me forget that I and my 
rising family were slaves, still there is something so 



CobbeWs Taking Jjeave of his Countrymen. IGl 

powerfiil iu the thought of country, and neighborhood, 
and home, and friends ; there is something so strong in 
the numerous and united ties with which these and end- 
less other objects fasten the mind to a long-mhabited 
spot, that to teai' one's self away nearly approaches to 
the separating of the soul from the body. But, then, on 
the other hand, when I asked myself — 'What! shall I 
submit in silence ? Shall I be as dumb as one of my 
horses'? Shall that indignation which bums within me 
be quenched % Shall I make no effort to preserve even 
the chance of assisting to better the lot of my unhappy 
country? Shall that mind which has communicated its 
light and warmth to millions of other minds now be 
extinguished for ever; and shall those who, with thou- 
sands of pens at their command, still saw the tide of 
opinion rolling more and more heavily against them, now 
be for ever secui-e from that pen, by the efforts of which 
they feared being overwhelmed ? Shall truth never agam 
be uttered % Shall her voice never again be heard, even 
from a distant shore % ' 

" Thus was the balance turned ; and, my countrymen, 
be»you well assured that though I shall, if I live, be at a 
distance from you; though the ocean will roll between 
us, not all the baniers which natiu'e as well as art can 
raise shall be sufficient to prevent you from reading some 
part, at least, of what I wiite; and, notwithstanding all 
the "s\^'ongs of which I justly complain; notwithstanding 
all the indignation that I feel; notwithstanding all the 
provocations that I have received, or that I may receive, 
never shall there di'op from my pen anything which, 
according to the laws of the land, I might not safely 
wi-ite and publish in England. Those who have felt 
theniselves supported by power have practised foul play 
towards me without measure, but though I shall have the 
means of retaliation in my hands, never will I follow 
theii' base example." 



162 Life of William Cohhett. 

And then, fm-ther on, with reference to the suspension 
of the writ of Habeas Corpus, he says : " I do not retire 
from a combat with the Attorney-General, but from a 
combat with a dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and i^aper. 
A combat with the Attorney-General is quite unequal 
enough. That, however, I would have encountered. I 
know too well what a trial by special fury is. Yet that, 
or any sort of trial, I would have stayed to face. So that 
I could have been sure of a trial of whatever sort, I would 
have run the risk. But, against the absolute power of 
imprisonment without even a heariyig, for time unlimited, 
in any jail in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, 
and paper, and without any communication with any soul 
but the keepers ; against such a power it would have 
been worse than madness to attempt to strive. Indeed, 
there could have been no striving in a case where I 
should have been as much at the disposal of the Secretary 
of State as are the shoes which he has upon his feet. No ! 
I shall go where I shall not be as the shoes upon Lord 
Sidmouth's and Lord Castlereagh's feet. I will go where 
I can make sure of the use of pen, ink, and paper ; and 
these two Lords may be equally sure that in spite of 
everything that they can do, unless they openly enact or 
proclaim a censorship of the press, or cut off all com- 
mercial communication with America, you, my good and 
faithful countrymen, shall be able to read what I write." 



Mr. Watson's Charge. 163 



CHAPTER VI. 

MR. Watson's chaege. — sir francis burdett and his loan. 

After quoting j)art of tliis addi'ess, Mr. Watson says: 
" It is unpleasant to find that this statement, so plausibly 
•set forth, does not contain the full or even the true rea- 
sons for his escape to America. There was another, the 
strongest of all, to which he makes no allusion. Hitherto 
the reader may have seen cause to conceive of him as a 
thriving and prosperous man. He had made money in 
America, and, notwithstanding his losses through his libel 
on Rush, he had brought home sufficient to start him, as 
it seemed, in a fair way of business in London. He had 
been receiving, some time before his departure, a profit of 
fifteen hundred pounds a year, as he tells us, from his 
Register alone ; and he was ' tiuning,' as the mercantile 
expression is, twenty thousand a year by his various pub- 
lications. He had saved ©■nough, as early as 180C, to get 
into his hands the estate at Botley, of the value of forty 
thousand pounds ; and he seems to have lived there, as a 
farmer, comfortably but not extravagantly. He was there- 
fore considered, by a large portion of the public, to be in 
excellent pecuniary circumstances. But he had no sooner 
embarked on the Atlantic than it became known to eveiy- 
body that he was deeply siuik in debt. The great cause 
of his encumbrances appears to have been reckless ven- 
tures in printing and publishing." Then, after speaking 
of what speculations he seems to have made ; of his prob- 
able losses in establishing the Parliamentary History, 
Parhamentary Debates, and State Trials ; of his endeavors 
to establish a branch business in America, where he had 
sent his nephew for that purjpose ; of his having mort- 
gaged his estate for two-fifths the purchase-money, and 
of his having got into debt with the tradesmen with 



164 Life of William Cohhett. 

whom lie was connected, Mr. Watson quotes an " authen- 
tic list " of his debts furnished to a writer in the Quar- 
terly Keview, amounting in all to £36,000, and then adds : 
"He had, therefore, other reasons for leaving England 
besides fear of the suspension of the Act of Habeas 
Corpus." 

AH this looks very bad for Cobbett ; indeed it seems 
quite staggering at first sight. But there is another side 
to the story; there are one or two very essential items 
left out of Mr. Watson's calculation ; and when these are 
considered, it will be found that the case is not nearly so 
bad as he represents it. It has been shown what Mr. 
Cobbett's debts amounted to, and an estimate is made of 
his income ; but no proper statement has been made of 
his assets, of the value of his real property as well as his 
literary property, the profits from the latter alone, with 
Cobbett at the head of it, were amply sufficient to provide 
him a livelihood and pay his debts. Cobbett himself de- 
clares, in his letter to Mr. John Hayes, that he was worth 
£70,000, and I think it can be shown he was not wrong 
in this statement. 

In one of the first letters he wrote from America he 
speaks of having left behmd him a farm covered with 
stock of all sorts; a home full of furniture; an estate 
which, with its improvements, had cost him £40,000, and 
which was mortgaged for less than £17,000 ; copyrights 
worth an immense sum, and a cm-rent income from his, 
writings of more than ten thousand pounds. 

In the first place, accepting the reviewer's statement as 
con-ect, it appears that about nine-tenths of his debts were 
owing to eleven persons or firms, from one of whom he had 
borrowed sixteen thousand pounds " on an estate of the 
value of forty thousand pounds," which estate, it will be 
observed, he had saved enough to purchase as eai-ly as 
1806. Sixteen thousand on an estate of the value of forty 
thousand is not a heavy encumbrance. Now if it is true 



3Ir. 'Wattionh Charge. 165 

that he was eai'ning ten thousand a year from his various 
publications, was he not making enough to meet his HabiH- 
ties? Would we, in this country, consider a man of frugal 
habits, with an estate worth forty thousand, an income 
of ten thousand a year, and a debt of thirty-six thousand, 
m an insolvent condition '? Could anything be more pre- 
posterous % But it will be said we have only Cobbett's 
assertion for this statement of his income. There are, 
however, other circumstances that tend to prove the truth 
of his words. 

It is well known that his pubhcations sold immensely; 
he was perhaps, after his liberation from prison, more 
widely known, and his writings were more extensively read 
than those of any other man in Britain, excepting perhaps 
those of Sii' Walter Scott. Of his Addi'ess to the Journey- 
men and Laborers of England, for instance, 200,000 copies 
were sold, when he allowed everybody to print it. And it 
must be borne in mind he was both publisher and author 
of all his writings ; so that he had not only the lion's share 
of the profits, but the other share too, whatever that may 
be called. Even after he was gone, those which he sent 
to England had a very large sale ; witness his little Eng- 
Hsh Grammar, which he wrote in Long Island, and trans- 
mitted to his son for pubhcation ; of this work ten thou- 
sand copies were sold in the first month. 

The bare fact of his having saved the greater pai't of 
forty thousand jDOunds as early as 1806 shows how profita- 
ble his business must have been, and what a large sale he 
must have had for his writings. It is indeed amazing to 
observe what a height of prosperity he had attained by 
means of his strong pen. About a score of years j)revious 
to this, he was an under-ofiicer in the army with eighteen 
pence a day ; now, he was one of the most powerful and 
popular writers in the kingdom with an income of ten 
thousand pounds (fifty thousand dollai's) a year ! The Six 
Acts were passed, in fact, to reach him because of the 



166 Life of William Gobbett. 

enormous sale and wide-spread influence of his writ- 
ings. He was really the leader, the spokesman of the 
masses of the English people. Nor did he express revo- 
lutionary or seditious sentiments, or incite the people to 
forcible resistance to the government. All he wanted 
was a reform of Parliament and a rectification of abuses. 
In his Address to the Journeymen and Laborers he shows 
that labor is the foundation of all wealth ; that the people 
therefore (whom the Tory papers called the swinish mul- 
titude) are the creators of that wealth; that riots and 
attacks on butchers and bakers and brewers are unjust 
and foolish ; that complaints at. lowering wages and the 
economizing efforts of employers, who themselves are 
often even worse off than the employed, are equally 
foolish ; and that the real cause of all their miseries lay 
in the enormous load of taxation, which could be removed 
only by a reformed Parliam^ent. 

Till the passage of the Six Acts, Cobbett was therefore 
not only solvent but prosperous ; his income was large 
and his manner of living frugal ; even Mr. Watson allows 
that he was not extravagant. Hence there is every reason 
to beHeve that he could easily have satisfied his creditors 
had he been left unmolested. Wliat justice then is there in 
the assertion that he ran away to escape his creditors? 
for that is what Mr. Watson's words mean. It is clearly 
false that he fled on accoimt of having brought commercial 
ruin on himself ; for never did his writings sell more exten- 
sively, never were his talents more in demand or more richly 
rewarded ; never was his income larger than at this time. 

I have been told of a German political agitator of 1848 
who, after suffering close confinement for years in an Aus- 
trian dmigeon, was asked, long after his release, to join 
some young men in a liberal movement for the benefit of 
his country. Although the enterprise was not unlawful, 
or immediately dangerous, he constantly refused, saying, 
" They have never been in a dungeon ! " 



3Ir. Watson^s Char<je. 167 

In this case, the man's spiiit was completely crushed ; 
all power of resistance was pressed entirely out of him, and 
he became the living rej^resentation of what all tyi-ants 
want theii' subjects to be. Although Cobbett had felt and 
seen the temble power of the British Government; al- 
though the ii'on had entered his soul, and he had felt it 
ten'ibly ; he came out as bright and plucky, strong and 
aggressive as ever. Yet, although he had not succumbed 
to this power, it is evident he dreaded a repetition of its 
exercise, especially in an intensified form ; for this time, 
under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, it would 
be close conjinenioit, and for a longer period , and close 
confinerhent means imprisonment vnthoiht pe7%, paper, and 
inJc, and loith no communication with anybody hnt the 
keepers • a fate almost as terrible as that of his favorite 
author, j)oor Dean Swift, who, in mental darkness, passed 
the last tlu-ee years of his life in complete silence in the 
hands of keepers. Is it any wonder that Cobbett di-eaded 
such a fate % Except absolute torture on the wheel, noth- 
ing more terrible can be conceived. This was what the 
remorseless Castlereagh and his aids had in store for him ; 
this was what they wished to bring him to ; and could 
Castlereagh have once got him behind bolts and bars 
under these conditions ; could he have once succeeded, by 
this terrible confinement, in destroying his reason and 
turning him into a raving maniac, I have not a doubt but 
he would have crept down from his high tower and slijit 
into the prison, in order to feast his eyes with a sight of 
his once dreaded, but now helpless and ruined enemy ; I 
have not a doubt but he would, like James I. with the tor- 
tured Covenanters, have stood complacently looking at 
him while others moved away, unable longer to endui*e 
the sight. 

Had Mr. "Watson experienced a two-years' confinement 
imder lock and key, within sight and smell of all that is 
hateful and criminal, he would perhaps have found Cob- 



168 Life of William Cobbett. 

bett's reasons for departing quite sufficient and satisfac- 
tory without seeking any other ; he would perhaps have 
had a httle feeling for the man who had had " a midsum- 
mer night's dream " in Newgate such as he did not wish 
to have repeated. 

If Cobbett remained at his post, he had to fear imprison- 
ment by the government ; if he announced publicly that 
he was going away, he had to fear imprisonment or deten- 
tion by his creditors ; for the value of his property de- 
pended entirely upon his presence at the head of it ; and 
if he left the country secretly, he had to fear the loss of 
everything but his liberty. Then, again, if he remained 
at his post, he would feel either that he was writing in 
shackles or in constant fear of prosecution ; or, escaping 
prosecution, he would be apt to incvo- the contempt and 
neglect of his countrymen. In this perplexing dilemma, 
he made up his mind that he would, at any rate, secure 
his personal liberty — compared with which, loss of fortune 
was not to be considered for a moment — ^and while doing 
what he could for his own country, begin Hfe anew in a 
foreign but free country. In this determination he proba- 
bly erred ; but if so, who can blame him % 

In regard to Sir Francis Burdett and Cobbett's debt to 
him. Sir Henry Bulwer thinks that as the money was ad- 
vanced to a pohtical partisan, the lender could scarcely 
have expected it to be repaid ; yet the wealthy baronet, 
"having advanced it to a political partisan, was not al- 
together pleased at seeing his money and his partisan slip 
through his fingers at the same time; and made some 
remarks which, on reaching Cobbett's ears, aroused a 
vanity that never slept, and was only too ready to avenge 
itself by abuse equally ungrateful and unwise." The 
amount of Cobbett's indebtedness to Sir Francis was 
£4000. In the above-mentioned letter to Mr. John Hayes, 
who was, in 1819, imprisoned for ten weeks for ringing a 
bell announcing Cobbett's return to England, Cobbett 



Cohbett''s Second Itesldence in America. 169 

refers to Sii' Francis iii these words : " Let him hug him- 
self in the thought that the seventy thousand pounds 
earned with my pen have been squeezed from me and my 
family by those various Acts of Oppression and Fraud, 
which aftbrded him the occasion to promulgate through 
the newspapers, as soon as my back was turned, an insin- 
uation that I had decamped on accovmt of a debt, the 
very existence of which he was bound in honor to keep 
secret." This, then, was the cause of Cobbett's estrange- 
ment from Sir Francis. It is evident, from this sen- 
tence, that the money advanced by Su- Francis was some- 
thing like election expenses, a sum advanced for the pur- 
pose of promoting the interests of the party, and conse- 
quently, of the LEADER of that party. Deducting, there- 
fore, this so-called debt and the amount of his mortgage, 
the latter requii'ing merely payment of interest at stated 
periods, there remained only £16,000 requiring payment 
of principal and interest at a stipulated definite time, 
which, it is plain, would, with the handsome income he 
had at this time, have been easily paid, had the govern- 
ment not interfered with him. So much for Mr. Watson's 
terrible-looking indictment. 



CHAPTER VII. 

cobbett's second residence in AMERICA. HIS CHANGED 

SENTIMENTS REGARDING THE UNITED STATES. 

" So long as a man pays his bills," says Sir Henry Bul- 
wer, "or sticks to his party, he has some one to speak in 
his favor; but a runaway from his pai'ty and his debts, 
whatever the cii-cumstances that lead to his doing either, 
must give up the idea of leaving behind him any one dis- 
posed to say a word in his defence." So that, no sooner 
8 



170 IJfe of William Oohhett. 

was Cobbett known to be gone, than a liue and cry of 
desertion of the party, of running away from his credit- 
ors, of bankruptcy, ruin, and what not, was set up, all of 
which had the most damaging effect on his reputation. 
And all his publications became valueless ; for he had been 
the life and soul of them all, and without his name they 
were like the play of Hamlet without Hamlet himself. 

Cobbett took up his residence in Long Island, where 
he rented a farm, called Hyde Park Farm. He had made 
up his mind that he would apply " to the earth, to the 
untaxed earth," for a living. It would be affectation for 
him to pretend, he says, that he could not get a living by 
his pen ; but it was his intention to be a downright farmer, 
and to depend solely upon what he could do in that way 
for a living. His choice, not an unwise one, shows the 
simplicity of his character and the fewness of his wants ; 
but I cannot help thinking that if he had devoted less 
attention to digging and delving, and more to studying 
and reflecting ; if he had at this time stored his mind with 
the lessons and knowledge derived from extensive study 
of general history and literature, he would not have 
fallen into those gross and ridiculous errors into which 
he subsequently fell, and the latter part of his Hfe 
might have been as felicitous, as bright and brilliant as 
his early career. Here he should have seen, read, studied, 
listened, and remembered. Here was his chance to sup- 
ply the only thing in which he was lacking, knowledge, 
to make him more than a match for the ablest of his ad- 
versaries. Had he done this ; had he studied rather than 
digged, he would never have adopted the raw, extravagant 
theories which he shortly afterwards broached, and he 
would have retiu-ned to the onslaught like a man refreshed 
with new wine and furnished with new and superior armor. 
Some may say it was too late ; he was too old to study. 
Nay, it is never too late to learn ; never too late to ac- 
quire wisdom. Think of the historian Ranke beginning 



CohhetCs Second Mesideuce in America. 171 

his studies for a new histoi'y of the world at eighty-one ; 
and now, in his eighty-fifth year, issuing the thii-d vokime 
of it ! To every successful public man study is the very 
life of hiin, the very breath of his nostrils. 

The first requisite of success for a literary man is 
fortune, or at least sufficient means to live in comfort 
independently of his pen. Without this, he cannot have 
the leisiu'e, the books, the means of seeing and procuring 
all those things that pertain to a life of culture ; he can- 
not have the independence of mind and the calmness of 
judgment necessary to produce anything worth reading, 
anything of real value. Had Milton been obliged to 
"WTite for bread, he would never have produced Paradise 
Lost ; had Fielding not had an income independent of 
his pen, he would never have created Tom Jones; had 
Buckle been poor, he would never have written his His- 
tory of Civilization ; had Macaulay not made a f ortiine in 
India, he would never have composed his History of Eng- 
land; and had Cobbett, when he did acquire a fortime, 
devoted more time to study and reflection, he would have 
produced a History of the Reformation of an entirely dif- 
ferent chai'acter from that which he did produce. That 
history is now read by few except fast-bound Romanists, 
and even they cannot fail to see the worthlessness of the 
judgments it pronoimces. 

To be able to read and study a great deal, one needs 
more than one pair of eyes; secretaries, assistants are 
necessary, to read and condense, to search, to Aviite to 
dictation, to seek out books, to translate ; for one single 
mind can digest all that the eyes of a dozen men can 
supply. To do these things, one must have leisure and 
means, and unfortunately Cobbett had at this time 
not much of either ; nor was he ever very soHcitous about 
the acquisition of means, which proeui-e leisure. Be- 
cause many distinguished men have been poor, some 
think poverty meritorious ; it is a common thing to hear 



172 Life of William Cobbett. 

people say it is nothing to be ashamed of; but I am 
rather incHned to think, with Horace Greeley, that, in 
this country, it is something to be ashamed of; for, in 
nine cases out of ten, it is an evidence of want of capacity, 
want of industry, or want of self-denial. It is meritorious 
to save ; because every penny saved means so much self- 
denial, so much leism-e for culture and travel, so much 
ability to help every good cause. 

Cobbett's contributions to the Register were regularly 
sent over by every packet; but, as has been observed, 
they came too late; the interest was gone before they 
arrived; and they fell, to use Mr. Watson's expressive 
simile, hke shot fired after a battle. 

His intentions at this time, his feehngs towards his 
native land, and his changed sentiments towards the land 
of his adoption, towards the republican government and 
republican people he had formerly so savagely assailed, 
are displayed in the following extract from the first of a 
series of papers which he sent over, entitled, " A History 
of the Last Hundred Days of Enghsh Freedom." The 
small-capitals are mine : 

"There are persons here, who will think well of no 
Enghshman who will not distinctly and explicitly disclaim 
all allegiance to the king, or all regard for his country. 
I will do neither. I owe allegiance to the king as much 
as any American owes allegiance to the laws of his coun- 
try. I cannot, if I would, according to the laws of Eng- 
land, get rid of it. And as to my country and my coun- 
trymen, my attachment to them can never be equaled by 
my attachment to any other country or people. I owe a 
temporary allegiance to this country, and am bound to 
obey ITS excellent laws and government. I am even 
bound to assist in repelling my own countrymen, and to 
consider them enemies, if they attack this country. All 
this I owe, in return for the protection I receive. I owe, 
besides, great gratitude to this sensible and brave people, 



Cohbett^s Second Jtesidence in America. 173 

and to THEIR WISE, GENTLE, AND JUST GOVERNMENT, f Or having 

preserved from the fangs of despotism this one spot of 
the globe. I owe to them my freedom at this moment. 
I owe to them that I am not shut up in a dungeon, 
instead of being seated in safety and writing to you. 
These are great claims upon my gi-atitude, and my feel- 
ings towai'ds the government and the people are fully 
commensui'ate with those claims ; but, as to the changing 
of allegiance, or the denying of my country, it is what I 
shall never do. England, though now bowed down by 
borough-mongers, is my country ; her people are pubhc- 
spuited, warm-hearted, sincere, and brave ; common dan- 
gers, exertions in common, long intercourse of sentiment, 
and the thousands upon thousands of marks of friendship 
that I have received, all these have endeared the people 
of my countiy to me in a pecuhar manner. I will die an 
Enghshman in exile, or an EngUshman in England fr-ee." 

The following amusing account of the cost and manner 
of Hving, and the greater advantages afforded, in Long 
Island, as compared with those in Hampshu-e, England, 
is worth reading : 

" Here, then, we are, with mutton not so fine as that of 
Hambledon, and lamb less early and fine than that of 
ChiUing ; but we have many good things which you have 
not; and, what is better than all the good things put 
together, we have not only no Secretary of State's war- 
rants, but of all the good things, every man, xooman, and 
child has an abundance. The salt, the very salt, which 
our neighbor Chiddle sells you for twenty EngHsh shillings 
a bushel, is brought here and sold to us for three EngHsh 
shillings a bushel. But, then, we have not the honor to 
see any man such as oiu* neighbor Garnier, whose grand- 
father was an honest coachman to George the Fii'st, and 
who, for a long life, has had a sinecui-e of twelve thousand 
pounds a year, paid him out of those taxes which make 
neighbor Chiddle's salt so dear in England, and which 



174 Life of William Gobhett. 

tax being taken oif when tlie salt is exported, makes us 
buy it so cheap. Is there never to be an end to these 
things? Are they to be endured ^or ever? Mrs. Hinx- 
man might here lend her pony to a friend for a week 
without her husband being surcharged, and made on that 
account to pay the horse-tax for a year. Here your wives 
might, as good farmers' wives did in England in former 
times, and as they do here now, tui-n their fat into candles, 
and their ashes and grease into soap, without your being 
either ^?^ecZ or itnprisoned for the deed. 

" Here poor Chalcroft of Cager's Green would have no 
need to pull down, in consequence of an exciseman's 
threat, the hop-poles that the hops were climbing up in 
his garden-hedge. Here you might, without any risk of 
loss of estate or of ears, turn your own barley into malt 
and your own honey into metheglin. Here you might 
travel from Jericho to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to 
Babylon (for all these places are in this island), and never 
meet, not only not a beggar, but scarcely a person walk- 
ing on foot, as almost everybody rides in some way or 
other. Here my son William's pretty little miniature 
mare, which has taught my children to ride, would not 
have cost me one hundred pounds sterling in tax, as she 
has done in England, when the origiaal cost of herself 
was axi\^ four pounds, saddle and all." 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

cobbett's great financial mistake- 
It was about this time that Cobbett sent over his 
famous "gridu'on" prophecy concerning resumption of 
specie payments. He had studied finance, as we have 
seen; but his study was not broad and deep enough; 
consequently he came to false conclusions. His taking 



Col)heU\t Great, Financial Mistake. 175 

Tom Paine as a guide on financial matters led him, I 
think, about as much astray as other people have been led 
who took poor Paine as a guide in religious matters. 
Had Cobbett done with this matter as he had done with 
gi'ammai ; had he taken time and pains to study it and 
gone to the bottom of the subject, he would undoubtedly 
have come to different conclusions; and, instead of 
finding himself on the wi'ong side and eventually con- 
demned as a teacher of false doctrine, he might have 
gained the immortal honor and fame won by his young 
opponent, Mr. Horner, whose views of the nation's finan- 
cial pohcy, diametrically opposite to those of Cobbett, 
were so wise and just, that they have been the admiration 
of statesmen fi-om that day to this. Though rejected 
at fii'st, Horner's views were finally adopted as wise and 
beneficent, and the ashes of their author were considered 
woiihy of a place among England's heroes, in West- 
minster Abbey. 

Cobbett's mistake was a tremendous one for he carried 
thousands of others along with him. It was one of those 
"blmiders worse than a crime ;" — a blunder, indeed, made 
by multitudes of others, by able statesmen and men of 
letters, but none the less a blunder for all that ; a blunder 
made by tens of thousands in the United States, notwith- 
standing England's experience before theii- eyes, and from 
which many deluded Americans have not yet been freed. 
Cobbett strenuously opposed resumption of sjpecie pay- 
ments ; he declai'ed it could not be done without ruin to 
the covmtry, and that it was the utmost folly to think of 
such a thing. He maintained that resumption was physi- 
cally impossible, and declared that if Horner's views were 
ever successfully carried into effect, he would suffer him- 
self to be broiled ahve on a gridii-on. "I will give 
Castlereagh leave to lay me on a gridiron, and broil 
me alive, while Sidmouth may stir the coals, and Can- 
ning stand by and laugh at my groans." So confident 



176 Life of William Cobhett. 

was lie of the correctness of his views, that he caused 
the picture of a gridiron to be placed at the head of 
his Register, in order to keep people in mind of his 
prophecy, which was ever afterward called the " gridiron 
prophecy." 

Cobbett showed that resumption would cause a depres- 
sion of trade, innumerable failures, and financial ruin to 
thousands of all ranks ; which it actually did, as it did 
here in the United States ; but he failed to see that these 
distresses were necessary and transient ; that they were 
merely the cutting away of the unsound branches of the 
vine, and that resumption was the only road to a sound pros- 
perity, to steady and regular progress in trade and agri- 
culture, the only permanent cure for the constantly in- 
creasing distresses of the people. " Before this Bill," he 
says, referring to Peel's Bill of 1819, "before this BilL 
arrive at the termination of its provisions, it will cause 
wheat to sell for four shillings a bushel or less [wheat had 
been selling as high as twenty-one shillings a bushel]. It 
will ruin every man who has borrowed money, even to the 
f om'th part of the amount of his property. [Has the same 
thing not brought every thing down two foui'ths in the 
United States "?] It will ruin every man who trades, to 
any considerable extent, on borrowed capital. It will 
ruin every man who has taken a lease of a farm for thi-ee 
years to come. It will ruin a great many thousands of 
persons who have annuities, rent charges, ground-rents, 
marriage-settlements, and other things to pay. It wiU 
disable the government from raising taxes sufficient for 
more than half the demands upon it. It will totally ruin 
commerce and manufactures. It will convey three-fourths 
of the estates of the nobility into the hands of fund- 
holders and stock-jobbers." How similar were the effects 
of Sherman's Bill in this country ! Did not almost three- 
fourths of the property of landlords pass into the hands 
of bond-holders and money-lenders % What immense for- 



Cobbett'ti Great Financial Mistake. Ill 

times miglit have been made by those who had studied 
history aiid foreseen coming events ! 

It was in the yeao.' 1797, in the fourth year of the war 
■s^dth France, that the Bank of England first suspended 
payments in specie. Then began a period of twenty-foiu' 
years. of bank-notes and high prices, of wild speculations 
and feverish excitements, of ruinous panics and war-bur- 
dens, of flush times and great fortunes for the army con- 
tractors and jobbers, of riots and insurrections and teiTi- 
ble hai'dships among the laboring classes. 

In 1810 Parliament appointed a committee to examine 
the state of the finances and to consider and report what 
measures might be taken for the improvement thereof. 
At the head of this committee, which was called the Bul- 
lion Committee, was the young Edinbui'gh lawyer, Francis 
Horner, a close- thinking, conscientious young man, whose 
rare talents and upright character had ah-eady gained him 
the respect and confidence of the country. Horner studied 
the subject thoroughly, and came to the conclusion that 
the only remedy for the coimtry's troubles was resump- 
tion of specie payments. His report was a long, exhaus- 
tive one, and his speech thereon, occupying 60 columns 
in Hansard's (formerly Cobbett's) Parliamentary Reports, 
was a masterly exposition of the subject. After an excit- 
ing debate,, Parliament rejected his proposals, and adopted 
a resolution declai'iug that the notes of the Bank of Eng- 
land were " equivalent to the legal coin of the realm," and 
must be "accepted as such in all pecuniaiy transactions to 
which such coin is lawfvilly applicable." "If any discour- 
aged economist at the present moment," says Professor 
Adams of Michigan University, in his admu-able lectm-e on 
England's Dark Days, "is disposed to seai'ch for comfortuig 
precedents of folly, it will j)i'obably give him no little satis- 
faction to find that, just after one of the most able exposi- 
tions ever made, the House of Commons rose to the sub- 
lime folly of declaring that paper was the equivalent of 



178 lAfe of William Gohbett. 

gold, even thougli gold in the market was then worth a 
premium of 15 per cent." It was not till eight years more 
of disasters and distresses of all kinds, that the folly of 
this resolution and the wisdom of those of Horner were 
perceived; and in 1819, Sir Robert Peel, who acknowl- 
edged his error in voting against Horner's views in 1811, 
and his present concmTence therewith, introduced a bill fix- 
ing a time for gradual resumption (1821-1823). This bill 
was adopted, and the country was immediately put on the 
sure road to prosperity. It was on account of this action 
of Peel's that Cobbett, long afterward, when he got into 
Parliament, made the motion that Sir Robert's name 
should be struck from the list of Privy Councellors, and 
the defeat he experienced on that occasion was almost 
equal to the broiling he wished to undergo should resump- 
tion succeed. 



CHAPTER IX. 

"a new way to pay old debts." 

But we must return to the farm on Long Island. On 
the 20th of May, 1818, Cobbett's house and much of his 
farm stock were destroyed by fire ; and he concluded at 
first to remove to New York before settmg sail for Eng- 
land , but he changed his mind and put up a thatched 
hut on the spot where his house had been situated, and 
here he lived till the summer of 1819, when he made 
preparations for returning to England. The Six Acts and 
the Act for the Repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act were 
repealed ; and so, with regard to his personal freedom, he 
had nothing to fear ; he could begin life in England anew, 
with perhaps as good prospects of success as ever he 
had ; and as all his hopes, all his plans, and all his pro- 



".1 JVew Wai/ to Pay Old Debts:' 179 

jects of political reform and progress were centered in 
England, thither he detenniaied to go. 

And now comes one of the many startling things in this 
stai'tling man's life : one of those " outrageous proposi- 
tions " and " demagogic sophistries " for which he was so 
heai'tily df^ounced. He was about to retiu-n to England ; 
his creditors there would demand payment of their claims ; 
he Avas unable to pay them ; was it his fault thej'' had not 
been paid'? How came they to be unjmid? He could 
have paid them all at one time ; but he had lost all his 
wealth. How came he to lose his wealth % The Six Acts 
had done it. "Wlio made the Six Acts ? The Parliament. 
"WTio made the Paiiiament? The people of England. 
AYell, then, let the people of England, or those of them to 
whom he owed money, go to the Parliament for then* 
money ; for the Pai'liament is resj)onsible for his failui'e, 
not he. That was how he looked at it. That was the 
view of the matter which he expressed to his creditors. 
Had he perhaj^s been talking with some of our American 
repudiators or greenbackers of that day! It looks very 
much like something of then- manufactui'e. 

The action of the Parliament elected by the peojDle 
ruined him ; and he felt inclined to make the people who 
elected that Parliament responsible for its action. Well, 
then, his proper course would be to sue the peojjle, the 
entire peojjle, for the damage done him, and not make a 
dozen of them responsible for it ; for his dozen creditors 
were not the people of England. His behavior on this 
occasion was perhaps assumed, as one way of showing 
the people of England the consequences of allowing 
blockheads to legislate for them; and to those of them 
Avho had lost then' money by this legislation, or by 
Cobbett's interpretation of it, it was no doubt a for- 
cible argument. He himself, however, as we shall soon 
see, never meant to adhere strictly to this principle ; it 
was, in fact, one of those reckless strokes of his, m 



180 Life of William Gohbett. 

whicli there was more malice, as tlie French say, than 
mischief. 

In a letter from Long Island, to Mr. Tipper, the printer, 
dated November 20th, 1817, which he meant as a kind of 
ch'cular-letter for the whole of his creditors in England, 
he says: "I hold it to be perfectly just that I should 
never, in any way whatever, give up one single farthing 
of my future earnings to the payment of any debt in Eng- 
land. My reason is, that the Six Acts were despotic or- 
dinances intended for the sole purpose of taking from me 
the real and certain and increasing means of paying off 
my debt and mortgage, which I should have done in two 
years. . . . But from the great desire which I have, 
not only to retui'n to my native country, but also to 
prevent the infamous Acts levelled against me from 
injuring those persons with whom I have pecuniary 
engagements, and some of whom have become my credit- 
ors from feelings of friendship and a desire to serve me, 

I EAGERLY WAIVE ALL CLAIM TO THIS PRINCIPLE, and I shall 

neglect no means within my power fully to pay and 
satisfy every demand, as far as that can be done consist- 
ently with that duty which calls on me to take care that 
my family have the means of fairly exerting their industry, 
and of leading the sort of life to which they have a just 
claim." 

After the expression of great expectations from 
the profits of his works, new and old, he continues : 
" Whatever part of this profit can, without endangering 
the well-being of my beloved and exemplary, affectionate 
and virtuous family, be allotted to the dischai'ge of my 
debts and encumbrances, shall, with scrupulous fidelity, 
be so allotted; but as to this particular object, and as to 
other soui'ces of gain, I will first take cai'e that the acts 
of tyrannical confiscation which have been put in force 
against me, shall not deprive this family of the means, not 
only of comfortable existence, but of seeking fair and 



•■'.'1 New Way to Pay Old Behts:' 181 

honorable distinctiou iu the world. It is impossible for me 
to say, or guess at, what I may, with my constant bodily 
health, and with the aptitude and industry which are now 
become a pai't of me, be able to do in the way of literary 
works productive of gain ; but I can with safety declare 
that, beyond the piu'poses of secui'ity to my family, I will 
retain or expend nothing until no man shall say of me 
that I owe him a fai'thing." 

This letter, being intended for all his creditors, soon 
came into the hands of Su* Francis Bui'dett, who wrote 
him the following reply, which, as might be expected from 
the natiu'e of the case, is a very strong one : 

"It is not my intention to enter into any controversy re- 
specting the honesty or dishonesty of paying or not pay- 
ing debts according to the convenience of the party owing. 
It seems that if ever it should suit your convenience, and 
take nothing from the comforts and enjoyments of your- 
self and family, such comforts and enjoyments, and means, 
too, of distinguishing themselves as you think thej^ are 
entitled to ; all this being previously secured, then you 
think yoiu-self bound to pay your debts ; — if, on the con- 
trary, that cannot be effected without sacrifices on yoru* 
and then- pai't, in that case your creditors have no claun 
to prefer, and you no duty to perform. You then stand 
absolved ; rectus in foro conscientim, and for this smgu- 
lai' reason, because those who lent you then- money when 
you were in difficulty and distress, in order to save you 
and youi" family from ruin, were and are vmable to protect 
you either against your own fears or the power of an arbi- 
trary government under wlfich they have the misfortune 
to live, and to which they are equally exposed. These 
principles, which are laughable in theory, are detestable 
in practice. That you should not only entertain, and act 
upon, but openly avow them, and blind yotu- own under- 
standmg, or think to blind that of others, by such flimsy 
pretences, is one more melancholy proof of the facility 



182 Life of William Cobbett. 

with which, self-interest can assume the mask of hypoc- 
risy, and, by means of the weakest sophistry, overpower 
the strongest understanding. How true is our common- 
law maxim, that no man is an upright judge in his own 
cause ! how truly and prettily said by the French, La 
nature se pipe — ^nor less truly, though more grossly, in 
English, ' Nature's her own bawd ! ' 

" In expressing my abhorrence of the principles which 
you lay down for your conduct, and concerning which you 
challenge my opinion, ... I do not desire that you 
should act upon any other with regard to me ; I should 
be sorry youi* family were put to any inconvenience on- 
my account. As to complaint or reproach, they are the 
offspring of weakness and folly — disdain should stifle 
them ; but nothing can or ought to stifle the expression 
of disgust every honest mind must feel at the want of in- 
tegrity in the principles you proclaim, and of feeling and 
generosity in the sentiments you expres§." 

This letter, forcible and elegant as it is, would have 
come with much better grace, Avith much more force, from 
some one of Cobbett's creditors to whom he had rendered 
fewer services ; to whom he had rendered less important 
and less powerful support than he had done to Sir Francis 
Biu'dett. What we have to notice, in the whole matter, is 
the fact that a man of the strongest understanding could, 
in a moment of weakness, give utterance to the weakest of 
arguments, and lay down the most foolish of principles, 
without ever considering that he thus laid himself 
open to the most damaging thrusts on the ]Dart of his 
enemies. 



Cobbett^s ResKfreetton of Paine. 183 



CHAPTER X. 

COBBETT's resurrection of PAINE. INFIDELS AND BELIEVERS. 

WHAT PAINE DID FOR THE UNITED STATES. 

This was not enougli; for one rash step leads to an- 
other; and Cobbett was now bent on committing acts 
which outraged everybody's notions of propriety. He 
seems to have made up his mind to do whatever he 
thought proper, even if the whole world condemned his 
conduct. Viewed, however, in a fan- and unpredjudiced 
sj^u-it, there is a certain element of noble and generous 
feeling in his act, which camiot fail to be recognized by 
all right-thinking men. 

On his retui-n to England, November 20th, 1819, he 
brought with him a present to his countrymen which 
they did not at all relish, something of whose virtues 
they had no appreciation w^hatever. This was nothing 
less than a box containing the bones of the famous 
Thomas Paine ; over which bones, as they were those of 
an Englishman, he intended that a splendid monument 
should be erected in England. This man Paine, whom 
Cobbett formerly denounced as " a rebel to his Idng and 
his God," as " a hypocritical monster," a "ragamuffin deist,"' 
and the like, he now called " a noble of nature," " a master 
in political science,'' " a man of great pohtical sagacity," 
"the scoui'ge of tyrants, under whatever name they dis- 
guised then- tyranny," and so on, and endeavored in 
various ways to inspu'e enthusiasm for his memory. 
Time, experience, and reading, had changed his opinions 
of Paine, and he thought it would not be a difficult task 
to change the opinions of others concerning him. 

In this attempt, however, he failed utterly. Paine was 
known, in England, only as a man who had -wi'itten against 
the Bible, and even the political theoxies of such a man 



184 Life of 'William Cohhett. 

would not be listened to. Had Cobbett been a man of 
less intellectual power, such a step would certainly have 
ruined him beyond recovery; for nobody in England 
wanted to know anything of Thomas Paine or his 
bones, and the man who praised him was looked upon 
as httle better than Paine himself, an enemy to England 
and the English Chiu-ch. 

Nor do I think that the feeling in the United States 
towards Paine is very much more favorable, or rather 
very much less hostile, than in England. Although he 
aided the American Revolutionary cause with pen and 
tongue; although he did more, perhaps, than any other 
single person in the ftu'thering of that cause, he is not 
regarded with the same feelings of kindness and of rever- 
ence with which the other Revolutionary patriots are re- 
garded. His religious principles have blighted his repu- 
tation and branded his name with somethmg peculiarly 
odious, somethmg which the mass of mankind seem to 
avoid as they would a loathsome disease. We have re- 
cently seen an attempt, by a gentleman of marvelous elo- 
quence and rare boldness of character,* to vindicate the 
private character and public services of this much-abused 
man ; an attempt which has, I believe, been completely 
successful, and by which his defender has gained the 
sympathy and the admu'ation of all right-thinkhig and 
fau--minded men. But this attempt has been admired 
because it was inspired by an honest and laudable desu-e 
to show fair play to one who was no longer able to de- 
fend himself, and whom nobody else attempted to defend; 
by no means because it was made in favor of Mi\ Thomas 
Pain«, the^infidel. 

It is hard to create, among a Christian people, enthusi- 
asm for an infidel, however talented he may have been, 
however much good he may have done ; for his revelation 

* Golonel Robert G. Ingersoll. 



Cobbetfs Resurrection of Paine. 185 

to man, even if true, is an unwelcome and painful revela- 
tion, adding nothing to his hajipiness or comfoi't in life or 
in death ; while the faith of the believer is a pleasing and 
inspmng one, filling his life -with the sunshine of hope 
and siuTounding it with a halo of imperishable glory. 
"While Washington has ever been regarded with reverence 
and love, Jeuerson ins'^u-es but cold esteem; while the 
superstitious, intolerant, bigotted, yet learned and large- 
hearted Doctor Johnson is still greatly loved and admired, 
and his Hfe read once a year by scores of scholars, the 
subtle, philosophic, but free-thinking David Hume in- 
spires no feeling warmer than respect ; while Schiller is 
entlu'oned in the hearts of his countrymen, Goethe is re- 
garded without a particle of affection ; and while Comeille 
and Molicre and Eacine are enthusiastically loved and 
admu-ed by all the world, Voltaire has never been looked 
upon, even by those who admire his genius, with any 
degi'ee of affection. Such are the feelings of the mass of 
mankind toward fi*ee-thinkers. It may be said, this is 
because their character has been vilified and their memory 
loaded with abuse ; but this, though often too true, is 
not the only reason: most peojDle have an instinctive 
dread of the man who, with ruthless hand, attempts to 
destroy all those sacred hopes and fears which have been 
instilled into their minds by their nearest and dearest 
benefactor, their mother. 

Cobbett did not, however, really go very much out of 
his way to perform this extraordinary act of devotion to 
the remains of the departed infidel. "Wlien the cu'cum- 
stances are considered, it will not appear at all strange 
that he acted as he did. Pame had lived on a faxm, given 
to him by the nation, at New Ro<'lielle, Long Island, and 
when he died was biuied in a corner of one of his own 
fields. Now this farm of Paine's was only a few miles 
fi'om Cobbett's farm ; and when in September or October, 
1819, the farm was sold, and the new owner wished to 



186 Life of William Cobbett. 

transfer the bones of Paine to a New York churcliyard, 
lie was informed that he could only get "leave to put them 
in the ground in a refuse-place, where strangers and sol- 
diers and other friendless persons were usually buried."* 
This Cobbett heard of, and it no doubt roused his indig- 
nation to think that the remains of such a man, an 
Englishman, too, should be so disrespectfully treated. 
So he resolved that the bones of Paine should be taken 
to his native land, where they would receive honorable 
burial, and where his memory would be revered. 

"Paine lies in a little hole," he says, "under the grass 
and weeds of an obscure farm in America. There, how- 
ever, he shall not lie, unnoticed, much longer. He belongs 
to England. His fame is the property of England ; and 
if no other people will show that they value that fame, 
the people of England will. Yes, amongst the pleasures 
that I promise myself, is that of seeing the name of Paine 
honored in every part of England ; where base Corruption 
caused him, while alive, to be burnt in effigy. We will 
honor his name, his remauis, and his memory, in all sorts 
of ways. AVhile the dead boroughmongers, and the base 
slaves who have been their tools, moulder away under 
unnoticed masses of marble and brass, the tomb of this 
'noble of nature' will be an object of pilgrimage with the 
people. . . . Let this be considered the act of the 
Reformers of England, Scotland and Ii'eland. In theu' 
name we opened the grave, and in their name will the 
tomb be raised. We do not look upon ourselves as adopt- 
ing all Paine's opinions upon all subjects. He was a 
great man, an Enghshman, a friend of freedom, and the 
first and greatest enemy of the borough and paper sys- 
tem. This is enough for us." 

Though Cobbett declared that he admired Paine for his 
poUtical, not his theological writings, which latter he said 

* Edward Smith's Biography of Cobbett, Vol. II., p. 214. 



CohheWs Jtesurrection of Paine. 187 

he had no acquaintance with — and we may the more read- 
ily believe this from the fact that he never did care about 
discussing theological questions — it was of no avail ; the 
EngHsh people would have none of him ; and the whole 
matter was finally tui-ned into ridicule by Cobbett's ene- 
mies, who sent forth the report that he had dug up the 
bones of an old negi'o who had been buried next to Paine, 
and not those of the noted infidel himself. He was cari- 
catvu'ed as a bone-grubber, carrying a large bag, with the 
label, " William Cobbett with Tom Paine's bones, to make 
knife-handles. N. B. — Bad spec. ;" and one of the Tory 
inn-keepers, at whose house he stopped, desired him, on 
learning who he was, to leave the house, and after his 
depai'tui-e, hoisted a placard announcing that " The bones 
of Cobbett and Paine have been ordered to quit the 
house." All his projects for raising money to build a 
monument to Paine failed ; and the whole affair, in short, 
caused more injury to his literary and political prospects 
than any step he had taken in his life. 

"Hjs plan now," says Su* Henry Bulwer, "was to 
raise a howl against the returning exile as an atheist 
and a demagogue amongst one portion of society, not 
doubting that in such ease he would be taken up as the 
champion of civil and religious liberty by another." 
This, however, would make him out a demagogue and a 
hypocrite, and he certainly was neither ; for his sincerity 
in his admu-ation of Paine, as a politician and finan- 
cier, is abundantly proved by his \\Titings, previous and 
subsequent to this period. As a statesman, he places 
Paine far above Edmund Bui'ke ; and declai'es that the 
treatment Pame received while in the Excise in England 
was the piimary cause of our American Revolutionaiy war ; 
for that that treatment di'ove him to America, where he 
did more than any other to create, maintain, and make 
that war a success. "As my Lord Grenville," says Cob- 
bett, in his letter to Lord Liverpool, 1819, "introduced 



188 Life of William Cohbett. 

the name of Burke, suifer me, my lord, to introduce the 
name of the man who put that Burke to shame, who drove 
him off the pubUc stage to seek shelter in the pension-list, 
and who is now named fifty million times where the name 
of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of 
the American colonies was the cause of the English Con- 
stitution, which says that no man shall be taxed without 
his own consent, given by himself, or given by some one 
in the choosing of whom he has had a free voice. But it 
was an English exciseman ; a petty officer in the Excise 
in Sussex, who, having gone to America, gave hfe, activity, 
vigor, and final success to this cause. It is not improba- 
ble that Mr. Paine might have received insolent treatment 
from some ignorant, conceited, unjust, and brutal superior 
in office. It is not improbable that in contemplating the 
characters and the actions of persons in power, he might 
have swelled with indignation against a system that could 
place and keep power in such hands [as Cobbett did him- 
self on his return to England]. A little thing sometimes 
produces a great effect; an insult offered to a man of 
great talent and unconquerable perseverance has, in many 
instances, produced, in the long run, most tremendous 
effects [of which there is no better instance than the gov- 
ernment prosecution of Cobbett himself in 1803J ; and it 
appears to me very clear that some beastly insults, offered 
to Mr. Paine while he was ia the Excise in England, was 

THE KEAL CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION IN AmERICA ; f Or, thoUgh 

the nature of the cause of America was such as I have be- 
fore described it ; though the principles were firm in the 
minds of the peojjle of that country; still it was Mr. 
Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles 

INTO ACTION." 

Paine's " Common Sense " was the most successful ex- 
ponent and the best defence of the American Revolution, 
and his " Rights of Man " the best and only successful 
reply to Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolution." 



VobbetCs Jiesurrectlon of l^aine. 189 

As Colonel lugersoll has truly said, the history of Uberty 
cannot be written ■s\dth the name of Pame left out. We 
must not forget, too, that the Bm-ke whom Cobbett de- 
scribes is the Biu'ke of the period after the French Revo- 
lution, not that of the period before it ; for, although the 
same man, the former Biu'ke was vastly superior to the 
latter, the French Revolution and the unfortunate death 
of his only and much-beloved son ha\'ing completely 
truTied his head. It was something like the effect pro- 
duced on Pascal after the accident at the Pont Neuilly. 
Now it was that George III. suddenly discovered that 
Bm"ke was a great man. While he was in the matm-ity 
of his great powers, dehveiing masterly speeches in ad- 
vocacy of ti'uly wise and statesmanlike measures, and op- 
posing with matchless eloquence the suicidal policy of 
the government, no notice whatever was taken of him by 
the king or the court ; but no sooner had he become the 
champion of monarchy arid the enemy of everything 
revolutionary, than the sun of royalty began to shine 
beneficently on him, and large bounties, in the shape of 
pensions amounting to thousands of pounds annually, 
were showered upon him. We shall hear something 
more of these showers by and by.* 

I have said that there was an element of noble and gener- 
ous feeling in Cobbett's conduct in this matter of Paine. 
The truth is, there is nothing in his whole life that re- 
dounds more to his honor. His bold, open, and generous 
admu'ation of Paine is deserving of the highest respect; for 

* See Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. I, pp. 326-341. Mr. 
Prior, in liis Life of Burke, sets down these pensions at £3,700 a year. 
Just think of an income for life of $18,000 a year! I am inclined to 
think that some of our good Republican statesmen would become 
monarchists, too, for such a consideration. — Cobbett's estimate of 
Paine will certainly not be surprising to the gentleman wlio has 
lately been endeavoring to prove, in the New York papers, that 
Paine was the author of the Declaration of Independence. 



190 Life of William Cobhett. 

it was unselfish, and uttered at tlie risk of ruin to his own 
reputation. Such is the obloquy attaching to the name 
of Paine, that, even at the present day, there are thou- 
sands who admire his writings, who do not dare to con- 
fess it. Cobbett was not an infidel; he stuck to the 
Enghsh Episcopal Chui-ch all his life ; he never inculcated 
infidelity or affected the society of infidels. But he had 
the merit to perceive the good quaUties of the infidel 
Paine, and the courage to express his admiration of those 
qualities. He admired him for his fearless advocacy of 
what he considered right, of what he considered true ; he 
admired him for his clear, statesmanlike views on various 
poHtical questions ; he admired him for his literary genius, 
for his bold, vigorous English style ; he admired him for 
his disinterested conduct and his large, benevolent heart ; 
he admu-ed him for his patriotic, philanthropic character; 
and he had the manliness to declare openly his admira- 
tion of all these things. He was proud of him, too, as his 
countryman, a man from whom he had learned many 
things; and whenever Cobbett received instruction, he 
had the honesty to acknowledge the benefit, by whom- 
soever conferred. Paine had some really great qualities. 
There is something grand in his declaration, that "the 
world was his country, and doing good his religion ;" and 
there is something that apjoeals to every candid mind as 
true, in his assertion, that " any system of religion that 
shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system." 

In all this, there was nothing, of course, which the 
Eeverend John Selby Watson, M. A., E. E. S. L., could 
see to admire ; nor does he fail to minister to the blmd, 
unreasoning, prejudiced hatred with which the ignorant 
multitude of Cobbett's day regai'ded the name of Paine, 
and do all he can to cause similar feelings to attach to the 
name of Cobbett. 



Ai Them Again. 191 



CHAPTEE XI. 

AT THEM AGAIN. DOWN, BUT NOT DISPIEITED. 

Cobbett's aiTival created quite a stii' in some pai'ts of 
England, especially in Manchester, where it was appre- 
hended by the authorities that his coming would create a 
disturbance. A few months previous to his retiu'n, there 
had assembled, in a field in Manchester called Peterloo, 
an open-air mass-meeting, presided over by Cobbett's co- 
worker, Henry Hunt, for the purpose of considering the 
question of parliamentai-y reform. This meeting was vio- 
lently disi)ersed by the orders of the magistrates of Man- 
chester — inspired, no doubt, by the mshes of the heai'tless 
Castlereagh — and in doing so some troops of horse were 
set upon the defenceless people, of whom several were 
killed and many wounded. This was called the Peterloo 
massacre. So the magistrates of the city, mindful of tliis 
aifan, sent a message to Cobbett, on hearing of his coining, 
informing him that it would be well for him not to enter 
the city with any display, or to do any thing likely to 
cause a breach of the peace. They caused placards to be 
posted up all over the city, enjoining all good citizens to 
stay at home and to refrain from getting up meetings 
either to welcome or to denounce the coming agitator ; 
and to make siu*e against all eventualities, they had special 
constables sworn hi, and sent for a body of troops. Cob- 
bett, at first, determiued to go there at all hazai'ds ; but, 
on second thoughts, he prudently concluded to put ofi" 
his -s-isit to that city till " a more convenient season."' He 
went on to London, where some five hundi'ed of his friends 
and followers had the pleasure of meeting and entertain- 
ing him at dinner at the Crown and Anchor, on which 
occasion ^Ir. Hunt presided, and Cobbett made a speech 



192 Life of William Cohbett. 

about parliamentary reform and the virtues and great 
qualities of Thomas Paine. 

Although financially almost rmned, he renewed, with 
dauntless courage, his former printing enterprises, and 
even started a daily paper, in order, as he said, to have a 
more immediate and frequent intercourse with the people 
than the Register afforded. However powerful a wiiter or 
however popular a man the editor may be, seldom does a 
daily paper pay on its first establishment ; large sums are 
generally sunk before it begins to make any returns, and 
Cobbett's "Evening Post" formed no exception to the 
rule. Not being backed by sufficient capital to keep it 
a-going until it did pay, it was discontinued after two 
months. This rash enterprise swallowed up the little 
means that he had 'left, and he was obliged to declare 
himself bankrupt. " He was so reduced," says Mr. Wat- 
son, " that he had not even a farthing to divide among his 
creditors. TijDper, the paper merchant, to whom he owed 
more than three thousand pounds, was good enough to 
sign his certificate. Timothy Brown, one of his great 
supporters, gave hitn a pound note and a few shillings, 
that he might have, for form's sake, something to surren- 
der to the commissioners. When, after some settlement 
of his affau's, he maaaged to collect his family together in 
lodgings atBrompton, they found themselves in possession 
of only three shillings, and under the necessity of borrow- 
ing money for printing the next number of the Register. ' 
What a change to the man who, two years before, had an 
income of ten thousand a year, and possessed j)roperty 
worth seventy thousand pounds ! 

He attempted to raise money by a penny subscription 
among the friends of reform. It was to be a fund to be 
used for furthering the cause of Reform "ui a way such 
as his discretion should point out." He certainly made 
no false pretensions about it ; for he openly declared that 
the sum he requked would be five thousand pounds, "to 



At, Theia Aijalu. 193 

be used solely by him, and without auy one ever having 
the right to ask him what he was going to do with it." 
Anything more frank and straightforward than this could 
hiU'dly be desired. However, he did not succeed in get- 
ting much in this way. IMi". Watson sneers at Cobbett 
for such an endeavor to raise money, and thinks that "the 
project had no other effect than that of giving him a 
fai'ther impulse downwards." What ! shall the princes of 
the blood, who have never done an iota for the benefit of 
the j)eople, who have in fact been reared, and clad, and 
fed, and fattened, and sumptuously maintamed at their 
expense, — shall these persons, who know nothing and cai-e 
less about the distresses or the burdens of the people, 
come begging and supplicating them, thi'ough their repre- 
sentatives in Parhament, for money to support them and 
pay then* debts ; and shall a man like Cobbett, who has 
spent his life in advancing the interests of the people, in 
promotmg theu' social, moral, and physical welfare, in 
affording them inestimable delight and priceless blessings 
by his Avrituags ; shall such a man be decried and sneered 
at because he asks some of the people whom he has thus 
served and benefited to assist him % Of coui-se, none but 
princes should take money from the people; — one of 
then* teachers, one of their benefactors, must never think 
of such a thing ; it is only for royal highnesses to live 
on pubhc money. 

An attempt at a reconcihation between Cobbett and Sir 
Francis Biu-dett proved fruitless. It was an affau- of third 
parties ; for neither Cobbett nor Sir- Francis seemed at all 
deskous of renewing each other's acquaintance. "Mr. 
Cobbett," said Sir Francis to one of the mediators, "must 
remember the allegations which he has made against me 
m the Register, and must know whether they are true or 
false. If they are true, no honest man would wish to re- 
new intercoui-se with me; and if they ai'e false, what is to 
be thought of the person who uttered such chai'ges, know- 
9 



194 Life of William Oobhett. 

ing their groundlessness'?" Cobbett had accused Sir 
Francis of a leaning toward the Conservatives and of a 
dilatoriness and lukewarmness towards the Reformers 
and their cause which amounted almost to treachery. His 
grounds for these assertions were not without foundation, 
for it is well known that Sir Francis began at this time to 
associate with the Tory nobility, to fall away from the 
Reformers, and he finally went over to the camp of the 
enemy. But Cobbett's conduct with regard to his debt 
to him, concerning which he was so often taunted by the 
opposition papers, was by no means praiseworthy. If he 
had simply recognized the debt and declared his inability 
to pay it, no one would have found fault with him ; but 
he maiiitained that as Sir Francis never came forward on 
the occasion of his (Cobbett's) bankruptcy, to prove his 
debt, he owed him nothing. 



CHAPTER XII. 

STANDS FOR COVENTRY. DEFENCK OF QUEEN CAROLINE. 

When, in 1820, on the death of George the Third, Par- 
liament was dissolved, Cobbett determined to make an 
attempt to get a seat in the new Parliament. He pub- 
lished, in the Register, an address to the Reformers, pre- 
senting his claims as a candidate, and requesting them to 
begin raising funds to ensxu'e his election. As there was 
no salary or pecuniary advantage connected with being a 
member of Parliament, and as his whole activity as a mem- 
ber of that body would be for the benefit of the people in 
general as well as of the particular county that elected 
him, Cobbett thought there was no reason why those peo- 
ple or that county, if they desired his election, should not 
raise funds to elect him ; nor did he think that in asking 
them to do so he was furthering merely his own interests. 



^ta7ids for Coventry. 195 

The reader cannot fail to have seen that if he had sought 
merely his own advancement, at the expense of other con- 
siderations, he could have long ago become a member of 
Pai'Hament, or jiossibly a high officer of the crown. 

On the present occasion his appeal for money was not 
in vain. One of his supporters subscribed five hundi'ed 
poiuids, and others subscribed smaller sums ; but as this 
was not sufficient — (what a ruinously expensive honor ! 
No wonder it has made many a man a banki'upt ; vide 
Moore's Life of Sheridan) — he sent out a circular to men 
of wealth, requesting seventy of them to subscribe each 
ten pounds more. "As fai' as the jDress can go," he says, 
**I want no assistance. Aided by my sons, I have already 
made the ferocious cowards of the London press sink into 
silence. But there is a larger range, a more advantageous 
ground to stand on, and that is the House of Commons. 
If I were there, the ferocious cowards of the press would 
be compelled, through theu* tkree hundred mouths, to tell 
the nation all that I should say, how much I should do ; 
and it is easy to imagine what I should say, how much I 
should do. A great effect on the public mind I have al- 
ready produced ; but what should I produce in only the 
next session, if I were in the House of Commons ! Yet 
there I cannot be without yoiu" assistance." 

Coventry, the scene of Godiva's famous exploit, was the 
borough he was to contest — this being thought the most 
favorable place for him ; but on approaching the town, he 
was met by a number of ruffians, probably descendants of 
Peeping Tom, who treated him in the most insulting 
manner, and even threatened to throw him into the river. 
At the hustings, his opponents were greatly in the nia- 
joxity, and their conduct was so rough that he calls them 
"savages," "yelling beasts," "man-bi'utes," "rich ruf- 
fians," and the hke. He mixed freely in the rough scenes 
of the canvass, however, and after a desperate stmggle to 
get votes, in wliich he lost his voice shouting to the up- 



19G Life of William Cohhett. 

roarious miiltitude, he found himself defeated by a large 
majority, and with a much better knowledge of Enghsh 
election contests than he had before. 

Queen Caroline's trial occurred in this year (1820). 
Cobbett defended her with all his eloquence ; in fact he 
wrote better and more effectively m her behalf than any 
other or all others of her hterary defenders ; for it was he 
that wrote the Queen's famous letter to the King, a mas- 
terly production, in which the whole pitiable situation 
of this most unfortunate lady is feelingly and forcibly 
displayed ; it was he, to use the eloquent words of the 
poet Coleridge, that " with kettle-drum reveille echoed her 
wrongs through the mine and the coal-pit, lifted the latch 
of every cottage, and thundered with no runaway knock 
at Carlton Palace itself." 

It may be stated here, for the benefit of those of my 
younger readers who are not familiar with the history of 
Queen Charlotte, that George the Foiu-th, while still Prince 
of Wales, married in 1795 his cousin, Caroline Amelia 
Elizabeth, second daughter of the Duke of Brunswick. 
In 1796 the Princess Charlotte Augusta was born of the 
marriage, and almost immediately afterwards the Prince 
left his wife, not having spoken to her for months pre- 
viously. Then she lived by herself in a country house at 
Blackheath, where she was the object of much sympathy, 
the people regarding her as the victim of her husband's 
licentiousness. In 1808, the Prmce having heard evil re- 
ports of her conduct, caused an investigation to be made, 
in which nothmg but imprudence could be proved against 
her. In 1814 she obtained leave to visit her kinsfolk at 
Brunswick, and afterwards to make a farther tour. She 
visited the cities along the coasts of the Mediterranean, 
and passed some time at the Lake of Como, in Italy, 
where an Italian, named Bergami, was a great part of the 
time in her company. When, in 1820, her husband be- 
came king, she was offered £50,000 a year to renormce 



Suiixh for Coventry. 1*,)7 

the title of Queen and live abroad ; but she refused, and 
retui'ned to England, making a triumphal entry into Lon- 
don. Now the government, at the instigation of the king, 
began proceedings against her, by bringing in a Pill for 
Divorce. This Bill necessitated a regular trial of the 
(jueen, in which much that was improper, but nothing 
criminal, was proved against her. The shameful manner 
in which she had been treated by her husband — the " first 
gentleman of Eiu'ope" forsooth! — and the splendid elo- 
quence of Brougham in Parliament and of Cobbett and 
others in the press, created such a strong feehng in her 
favor, that the ministry were obliged, even after its pass- 
ing the House of Lords, to give up the Divorce Bill. The 
queen then assumed the rank of royalty, but was refused 
(coronation, and turned away from the door of Westmin- 
ster Abbey on the day of the coronation of her husband. 
Cobbett, as I have said, wrote her famous letter to the 
king. Dashed oflf at night, the letter was copied by his 
daughter Ann on the following morning, and taken by his 
son to Mr. Alderman "NVood, who delivered it to the queen. 
" The queen," says Cobbett's son, John M. Cobbett, "• as 
my father understood from the alderman, was so de- 
lighted with it, that she determined to send it to the 
Idng at Windsor immediately ; and, fearing that her legal 
advisers might, if they arrived before it was gone, advise 
her to the contrary, she signed the paper just as it was 
then A\a-itten and sent it off. . . . Shortly afterwiU'd it 
was pubhshed in the Tbnes newspaper, and thence it went 
into every newspaper in the kingdom, and, being piinted 
on open sheets of paper, was posted all over London. It 
instantly produced the desired eflfect : the newspapers that 
first published it were eagerly sought for; groups of 
people stood about the comers where it was posted, read- 
ing and discussing it ; and the bulk of the people, now 
clearly understanding that the queen was resolved to 
remain and stand her tiial. determined to act their part 



198 Life of William Cobbett. 

on the occasion. The letter was so great a favorite with 
the queen, that when she had her portrait painted for the 
city of London, she desired Mr. Lonsdale, the artist, to 
represent her with this document in her hand." Here was 
another of those splendid hits, which, had he been a self- 
seeking politician, he would have turned to no small ad- 
vantage to himself. What was the conduct of Cobbett *? 
Queen Caroline offered to reward him handsomely ; and 
yet, though poor as a church-mouse, he declined her offers 
of reward. The queen, however, being determined that 
he should accept something as a token of her a;['j)reciation 
of his efforts in her behalf, bought a complete set of his 
Register, for which she gave him £50, which was £20 
more than the regular price. A politician of the Grant 
school would have made it the means of seeming advant- 
ages to his " cousins and his uncles and his aunts." 

The authorship of this letter waS attributed to several 
distinguished men of the day, especially to Dr. Parr, "the 
big-wigged rhetorician ;'' and one writer, recognizing the 
hand of Cobbett m it, says, "Perhaps a more classical 
pen may have here and there polished off the vulgarity 
of the author of the Twopenny Register." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CASTLEREAGH, COBBETT, AND WATSON. 

In 1821 Cobbett republished his essays on the paper 
system, entitled "Paper against Gold;" he also published 
a work on Cottage Economy and his Twelve Sermons. 
The latter contain as much sound sterling Saxon sense 
as anything in theological literature. He also commenced 
his rides through the country, leisui-ely observing every- 
thing as he went along, and making speeches at the 



Castlereagh, Cohbett and Watson. 199 

towns, villages, hamlets on his way, and wherever he had 
an opportunity urging parliamentary reforni as the grand 
panacea for all the evils of the country. He published 
the results of his observations weekly m the Register, 
under the title of " Iliu-al Rides," which were afterwards 
collected and pubhshed in book-form. Though full of 
pohtics, — in fact the book may be said to be a mixtui'e 
of pohtics, pleasantly and pen-pictures of rm^al life, — it 
is very amusing, and contains some admirable descri2:)tions 
of Enghsh scenery. He went on riding and lecturing 
and publishhig accounts of his rides for more than ten 
yeai's. 

IVIi-. AVatson says : " In August, 1822, the suicide of 
Lord Castlereagh gave occasion to Cobbett to bestow a 
kick on a dead lion. He A\Tote a satii'ical letter to the 
boroughmongers, commencing, ' Let me express to you 
my satisfaction that Castlereagh has cut his throat ;' and, 
in a letter to Joseph Swann, who was sent to Chester jail 
for selling seditious pamphlets, he says, ' Castlereagh has 
cut his throat, and is dead. Let that sound reach you in 
the depths of yom- dungeon, and let it carry consolation 
to yovu" suffering soul.' " A dead lion ! If Mr. Watson 
had said a dead tigei', or a dead idiot, or a dead mule, or 
a dead compound of all three, he would have been nearer 
the tnith. The author of the hoiTible cruelties of 1798 in 
Ireland, of the disastrous Walcheren expedition, of the 
suspension of the Habeas Corpus in time of profound 
peace, of the narrow, tyrannical Six Acts, and of many 
other wicked, ciniel, heartless acts, had more resemblance 
to a tiger than to a lion. He has justly been termed " the 
most intolerable mischief that ever was cast by an angry 
Pro\*idence over a helpless people." He and his master, 
George the Thii'd, another of IVIi-. Watson's lions, were 
worthy of each other : a pair of naiTow, ignorant, insane 
wretches, more fitted to peddle papers or blacken boots 
than to nile a kingdom. 



200 Life of William Gohhett. 

Castleieagli's death, like that of Louis XTV., was, in fact, 
an occasion of rejoicing for the whole people ; evidence of 
which is shown by the well-known fact that the voices of 
the choir chanting the burial-service at his funeral were 
almost drowned by the yells of the mob outside exulting 
over his death. His departuie was, in truth, a great relief, 
a great riddance to the country ; and if one can with pro- 
priety rejoice over any man's death, surely it is proper m 
this case. Nor was Cobbett the only one, among the lit- 
erary fraternity, that rejoiced overliis death; indeed, they 
doubtless all rejoiced, though few gave utterance to their 
joy. Prominent, however, among the utterances that were 
given, was Leigh Hunt's (or perhaps Lord Byron's) un- 
sparing flmg in the Liberator : 

' ' So he lias cut his throat at last ! He ? Who ? 
The man who cut his country's long ago." 

If such a man is a lion in Mr. Watson's eyes, we may 
easily imagine what Cobbett must be, and what Mr. Wat- 
son's motives in writing his life must have been. Yet it 
is perhaps quite natural for this gentleman to feel sympa- 
thy for the man who murdered his country as well as 
himself; for the man who goes deliberately and system- 
atically to work to destroy a great man's name and fame 
partakes himself of the character of an assassin. 



CHAPTEK XIV. 

THE PRESTONIANS' OVATION. 

In 1826 Cobbett made another attempt to get into Par- 
liament, this time to represent the borough of Preston, in 
Lancashire ; a place where, according to Mi-. Watson, the 
right of suffrage, even before the Reform Bill, was shai'ed 
by nearly all the inhabitants of the place. In this endeavor 



The Prestonianfi' Ovation. 231 

he was supported by Sir Thomas Bevor, a Norfolk baro- 
net, who thought highly of Cobbett, aud who not only 
presided at a meeting to fui'ther his election, but pro- 
moted a subscription to that end. On the day of elec- 
tion, Cobbett appeai-ed at Preston with his foui- sons. 
He had thi'ee candidates opposed to him, and it appears 
that, in his speeches, he attacked these candidates in too 
personal a manner to gain himself votes. At the close of 
the election, he was the lowest on the list, having received 
fewer than one thousand votes, while the highest received 
over three thousand. The whole number of votes cast for 
the thi'ee candidates, of whom two were elected, was 
7,678: the population of Preston in 1851 was nearly 
70,000. Supposing the population in 1826 to have been 
two-thirds of this number, the vote would still be very 
small for a town " in which the right of suffrage was 
shared by almost all the inhabitants of the place." 

Duiing this campaign, and even after the election, Cob- 
bett laid himself open to ridicule by much vain-glorious 
talk about himself and his popularity among the people 
of Preston. On presenting himself to the Prestonians 
the day after the election, and asking them if they still 
Avished him to be their member, " Never," he says, "never 
was there such a show of hands ; never approbation so 
unanimous, cheers so cordial, and honors so great!" 
jSIight not this, however, have been the spii'it shown by 
the mass of the people, the " lower orders," as the Tories 
called them, as opposed to the " upper ten," the few 
thousand voters? There is nothing more probable; yet 
Mr. Watson speaks of his audacity in making such a 
statement, folio whig the newspaper writers of the day, 
who, of course, ridiculed him beyond measure for his " uu- 
pai'alleled vanity and presumption." 

jMi'. Watson makes much of his constantly putting 
himself forward, of his praising and puffing his books, 
his trees, his plants, etc., and characterizes his subscrip- 
9* 



202 Life of William Cohhett. 

tions for political pvirposes, as " attempts to put money 
into his pocket." But the truth is, Cobbett's complete 
openness, his unreserved exhibition of all his plans and 
pm-poses in these matters, robs them of the reproach 
which would otherwise attach to them; everybody could 
see that, at bottom, the man's intentions were fair, and 
that for every thought he had about his own profit and 
advantage, he had twenty about the profit and advantage 
of his country. " He was always a hearty Englishman," 
says Sir Henry Bulwer, "... ever for making England 
great, powerful, and prosperous, — her people healthy, 
brave, and free." What did he seek more than a plain 
Hviag for himself and his family? Did he ever seek, did 
he ever receive, a penny of the public money? Not 
though it had been repeatedly offered to him for services 
rendered to the nation. Was he a spendthrift, a gambler, 
a drunkard, a glutton, or a hbertine? None of these. 
All of these things were far from him ; his only failing, 
if it may be so called, was his overmuch speaking of him- 
self. There is no denying the fact, that for self-conceit, 
and a bold but open puttiug forwai'd of himself, he sur- 
passed, perhaps, any Englishman that ever lived. But 
no man rightly acquainted with him will say that, in put- 
ting himself forward, his aims were purely selfish, for 
himself and his own advantage. He wanted every young 
EngUshman to become the industrious, early - rising, 
frugal, persevering, happy man he was himself. He 
knew,* he felt that he was fit to lead, and he simply 
declared openly and plainly what he felt. " He writes 
himself plain William Cobbett," says Hazhtt, " strips him- 
self quite naked as anybody would wish; in a word, his 
egotism is full of individuality, and has room for very 
httle vanity in it." Rousseau is celebrated as the only 
man who ever told all the bad as well as the good in his 
life; Cobbett may be set down as the only man in 
literature who openly declared all the best that was in 



An. I Unparalleled iSlceiie. 203 

him and all the best he thought of himself; — the worst, 
he left for his enemies to declare, for he knew there 
were plenty of them ready to do it. 



CHAPTER XV. 

AN UNPAKALLELED SCENE. 

The most striking passage in the whole of Mr. Wat- 
son's book is his description of an uproai'ious " dinner at 
the Crown and Anchor tavern, given, to Sii' Francis Bur- 
dett, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary (1826) of his 
election for Westminster. When Sir Francis proposed ' a 
full, fan, and free representation of the people in Parlia- 
ment,' Cobbett stai'ted up to offer an amendment. His 
])roposition was the signal for such an uproar as was 
probably never heard before or since at a public dinner. 
There were loud cries of ' Turn him out ! ' and a disposi- 
tion was shown by a large majority to do what was 
suggested. Cobbett, however, had not gone without sup- 
porters, who introduced two constables to guard him, and 
kept up the clamor till he should be heard. At last, as 
there seemed to be no other mode of mitigating the 
tumult, he was allowed to speak, when he declared his 
amendment to be, ' That his Majesty should be soHcited 
to eject from his counsels all enemies to reform, and 
especially that implacable enemy to reform, IMi*. Canning, 
at whose back Sii* Francis Bvu-dett had consented to sit. 
"What he endeavored to say in support of this amendment 
was drowned in noise; and after exhausting himself in 
futile efforts to be heard, he sat down amid a general 
shout. "V\Tien the health of Sir Francis was proposed, he 
again rose, and vociferated ' No, no,' flom-ishing his arms 
above his head in a most astonishing manner. Fresh in- 



204 Life of William Cobbett. 

dications appeared of a determination to eject him. He 
roared out that Sir Francis was ' a traitor to the cause of 
the people.' The health .of John Cam Hobhouse being 
drunk, Mr. Hobhouse rose to return thanks, and Cobbett 
rose at the same time and refused to give way. He placed 
his arms a-kimbo, thrust out his tongue, and gnashed his 
teeth. Hobhouse's party cheered and clapped their hands ; 
Cobbett's hissed, howled, and screamed. Cobbett bawled 
out the name of Hobhouse with offensive epithets ; and 
Hobhouse, at last provoked beyond endurance, snatched a 
wand from one of the stewards and declared that he 
would knock Cobbett down unless he desisted, though he 
was a miscreant unworthy of any gentleman's chastise- 
ment. Cobbett and his party retorted in the language of 
Billingsgate. The others asked why he did not pay Sir 
Francis what he had borrowed, and reproached him with 
having grubbed up Tom Paine's bones only to make money 
of them. The rest of the evening was passed in similar 
contention and uproar ; Sir Francis and his friends in vain 
endeavoring to restore order." 

I don't think this can be beaten even by Tammany Hall ; 
and as a specimen of the amenities of public life, it is a 
pretty picture as it stands. Of course, it is plain, even in 
this account, on what side IVIr. Watson's sympathies are. 
Cobbett's account of the affair was a little different from 
IVIr. "Watson's ; for he declares that Hobhouse was a cipher 
compared with himself, and that Sir Francis Burdett was 
"a wrigghng, twisting, shuffling, whimpering, canting 
culprit," who would have been thrown out of the window 
had he not interfered to protect him ! Which gave the 
most correct version of the affair I cannot now tell ; but 
it must be confessed that Cobbett, in the heat of political 
controversy, sometimes grossly misrepresented his oppo- 
nents, and it is by no means improbable that he over- 
stated his importance on this occasion. But who that has 
had to write and speak constantly in the thick of political 



Another Proaeoutlon. 205 

wai-faa'0 has been always correct in his statements? 
^^^lo has never overstepped the Hmits of propriety ? For 
my pai't, I have httle sympathy with faultless men ; and I 
thoroughly sympathize with the feelings of that \viiter — - 
I think it was Theodore Pai-ker — who expressed great 
dehght on finding that even George "Washington swore 
some good round oaths. Not^\dthstanding his faults, 
Cobbett was a brave, true man, who can afford to have 
his sins of commission as well as of omission fairly told. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ANOTHER PROSECUTION. VICTORY AT LAST ! PARALLEL BE- 
TWEEN ENGLAND AFTER THE NAPOLEONIC WARS AND THE 
UNITED STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. 

Once more the government attempted to lay hands 
upon him; another prosecution for sedition was begun. 
This time it was by a Whig government, and the charge 
was that of piinting and pubhshing ai'ticles calculated to 
incite the laborers of England to incendiarism. The farm- 
laborers of England had at this time (1830) become so 
crazed by want and stai'vation, so mad with misery, that 
they committed all maimer of excesses; even incendiarism 
became common among them, and fires blazed throughout 
the country. Cobbett, in commenting on the deeds of a 
class of people fi'om whom he himself had sprung, and 
for whose wrongs and distresses he deeply felt, gave vent 
to his feelings in such strong and impassioned language, 
that, as his biogi'apher of 1835 says, " it almost swelled 
into sedition." 

Let us glance for a moment at the cause of these dis- 
tresses. The com-se of events in England between 1815 
and 1830 beaia such a strong resemblance to that in the 



206 Life of William Cobhett. 

United States between 1865 and 1880, that a student of 
English affairs during this period might easily have 
prophesied what would take place in the United States 
after our long and costly civil war. Unlimited paper- 
money; high prices and abundance of money; great 
speculation and flush times; commercial crises; many 
failures and breaking of banks; depression of trade in 
all its branches ; multitudes thrown out of employment ; 
discussions everywhere as to the cause of the bad times ; 
talk about repudiating the debt ; schemes for paying it 
off; plans for returning to specie payments; the funding 
of the debt ; reducing the interest ; general fall in prices 
and reduction of salaries; hard times and low prices; 
return to specie payments; retrenchment everywhere; 
revival of agricultural and commercial industry ; renewal 
of manufacturing and shipping business, etc., etc. — all 
these well-known scenes are portrayed in the columns of 
the Register for these years. Might not a prudent mer- 
chant or speculator, as well as the statesman, be able to 
profit by a knowledge of this history ? Might not any 
man be thus enabled to forecast future events, and " profit 
by the example? " 

Willie the war is going on, there is immense commercial 
activity and prosperity among the manuf actm-ing classes ; 
for the government needs millions of dollars' worth of 
goods of evety possible description to supply the armies 
in the field; so there is abundance of work, plenty of 
money in circulation, and thousands make fortunes ; — but 
it is afte7' the war that the reckoning comes; then the 
bills must be paid; then the suffering begins ; and just 
when many people, good easy souls, suppose that good 
times are coming, the worst of all times is at hand! 
England contracted a debt of 800,000,000 pounds ster- 
ling in the Napoleonic wars, and the people have had 
to pay the interest of this vast sum ever since, some 
26,000,000 pounds a year, and will no doubt have to go 



Anotlier Prosecution. 207 

on paying this or a larger sum for many centuiies to 
come. Will they ever get rid of the principal ? 

Well, Cobbett was to be tried for showing sympathy 
with these distressed, overtaxed, and crime-committing 
farm-laborers. As in former cases, Cobbett vmdertook 
his own defence, and this time he entered the court-room 
accompanied by his four sons, all tall fellows like himself. 
In the indictment, he was tenned a laborer, and he an- 
noyed the Attorney-General, Lord Denman, very much, 
by insisting that his lordship should, in his comments on 
the case, call him a laborer. " Lord Tenterden (the Judge) 
was at times obliged to interfere," says IVIr. Watson, " and 
told him at last that if he would not be silent, he must be 
removed from the court. ' Unless the Attorney-General 
call me a laborer,' replied Cobbett, ' I must protest every 
time.' Denman was annoyed by Cobbett's persistence, 
and provoked to increased severity of language ; so that, 
in concluding, he almost asked the juxj to lay aside all 
thoughts of mercy." The speech Cobbett made on this 
occasion, which lasted six hom-s, is said to have been one 
of the finest forensic efforts ever made ; the enthusiasm 
he created^ was irrepressible, and, notwithstanding the 
prohibition and the warnings of the coui-t, he was vehe- 
mently cheered again and again in the course of hia speech. 
The jiu-y, on retuing, found they could not agi'ee ; Cobbett 
was acquitted, and he walked out of Court a free man, 
having seciu'ed a great triumph, in fact almost the only 
legal triumph he had ever secm-ed. The action of the 
jury was everywhere applauded, and the intended victim 
was everywhere congratulated on the result of the trial. 
Since tliis trial, the press of England has been free from 
pohtical prosecutions. I wish the same could be said of 
the press of Ireland. 



208 Life of William Cobbett. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 

WHAT HIS CONTEMPORARIES SAID OF HIM. COBBETT AND LORD 

JEFFREY. 

He now pressed une matter of parliamentary reform 
with all his might, writing and lecturing and speaking 
all over the country, preparing and educating the people 
more than any man of his day for the great Reform Par- 
liament of 1832, which passed the Bills that gave eman- 
cipation to the Catholics, swept away the rotten boroughs, 
and greatly extended the right of suffrage. Wherever 
Cobbett spoke, great crowds assembled to hear him ; and 
the admiration of him by the million seemed to increase 
and develop itself wherever he went. Even where the 
prophet is supposed least likely to be honored, his native 
town, there too Cobbett was invited by his townspeople 
to a complimentary dinner, — the English are famous for 
dinners, — on which occasion he pronounced the day the 
happiest of his life, "though few men," said he, deter- 
mined not to be behindhand in anything, " perhaps ever 
spent so many happy days as myself." 

Mr. Samuel Bamford, who had met him at these reform 
meetings, gives, in his "Passages in the Life of a Radical," 
the following description of him, which a writer in the 
Quarterly Revieio (1843) pronounces very good : " Cobbett 
I had not seen before. Had I met him anywhere save in 
that room and on that occasion, I should have taken him 
for a gentleman farming his own broad estate. He seemed 
to have that kind of self-possession and ease about him, 
together with a certain bantering jollity, which are so 
natural to fast-handed and well-housed lords of the soil. 
He was, I should suppose, not less than six feet in height ; 
portly, with a fresh, clear, and round cheek, and a small 



WTuft his Contemporaries jSaid of him. 209 

gfray eye. twinkling vdih. good humored ai'cliness. He 
was di'essed in a blue coat, yellow swansdown waistcoat, 
di*ab kersey breeches, and top-boots. His hair was gray, 
and his cravat and linen were fine, and very white. He 
was the perfect representation of what he always wished 
to be: an English gentleman-farmer." 

Cobbett was perhaps at this time the strongest, 
most marked personality in England. People never spoke 
of what the Register said, but of what Cobbett said, and 
the very name of his paper was turned into " the Cob- 
bett." " Wliatever a man's talents, whatever a man's 
opinions," says Sir Hemy Bulwer, " he sought the Regis- 
ter on the day of its appearance with eagerness, and read 
it with amusement ; partly, perhaps, if De Rochefoucauld 
is right, because whatever his party, he was sure to 
see his friends abused ; but partly, also, because he was 
sure to find, amidst a great many fictions and abundance 
of impudence, some feHcitous nickname, some excellent 
piece of practical-looking ai'gument, some capital expres- 
sions, and very often some marvelously fine writing, all 
th 3 liuer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting what- 
ever figure or sentiment it set foi'th in the simplest as 
well as in the most striking dress." So successfal, so 
formidable had the Register become, that its opponents 
had gotten up half a doz 3n imitations of it ; same paper, 
same type, same size, same headings of matter and so on. 
But all in vain, the spirit of the master was not in them: 
they all failed, most of them speedily ; for the "■ coun- 
terfeit presentment" found no favor in the eyes of the 
public. 

One may easily see by the letters and wi'itings of his 
contemporaries how much he was in theii' mouths, and 
how frequently his opinions, plans, principles, and chai'ac- 
ter were discussed. " Have you seen Cobbett's last num- 
ber?" says Coleridge, a strong enemy of his, writing to 
Washington AUstou : " It is the most plausible and the 



210 Life of Willimn Cobbett. 

best written of anything I have seen from his pen, and 
apparently written in a less fiendish spuit than the average 
of his weekly effusions. . . . One deep, most deep im- 
pression of melancholy did Cobbett's letter to Lord Liv- 
erpool leave on my mind — the conviction that, wretch as 
he is, he is an overmatch in intellect for those in whose 
hands Providence, in its retributive justice, seems to place 
the destinies of our country, and who yet rise into 
respectability when we compare them with their parlia- 
mentary opponents." And again in another letter to the 
same friend: "The Cobbett is assuredly a strong and 
battering production throughout, and in the best bad 
style of this political rhinoceros, with his coat-of-armor 
of dry and wet mud, and his one horn of brutal strength 
on the nose of scorn and hate; not to forget the flaying 
rasp of his tongue ! " 

John Wilson, of Blackood, repeatedly brings him for- 
ward in his Noctes AnibroslancB^ and although opposed to 
his political principles, he unhesitatingly expresses his ad- 
miration of the man. In one of his Noctes, he has a talk 
with Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Heoiew, who had written 
a slashing article on Cobbett, proving of course his shock- 
ing inconsistency by comparing his Porcupine Paj)ers of 
1794 and his Register of 1807. Wilson turns the tables 
on the critic in the most admu'able manner, by showing 
that he (the critic) publicly expressed in 1831 the very 
sentiments he had so vehemently condemned in Cobbett in 
1807. " Come, now," says Wilson to Jeffrey, " fill a huge 
Homeric bumper of red wine, rich and blameless — that's 
it, thank ye — and know that your immortal article (on 
Cobbett), all but the headpiece, which was a flourish, and 
the tailpiece, which was ferocious abuse, consisted of a 
clear, logical, analytical examination, and a triumphant, 
philosophical, unanswerable refutation of the then current 
arguments for parliamentary reform ; of which same iden- 
tical arguments, your lordship's speech in the House of 



l]^at his Contemporaries Said of him. 211 

Commons, in secon ling Lord Johnny Russells great mo- 
tion of the 1st of Mai'ch, 1831, was a really/ brilliant com- 
pact^ and nervous resume, rifacciamento, and hash." Is 
there any absmxlity greater than that of expecting a 
sensible and consequently progi'essive man to be always 
of the same opinion on all subjects? "It is the dnti/,sind. 
ought to be the honor, of every man," says the great 
Chatham, " to own his mistake, whenever he discovers it, 
and to warn others against those frauds which have been 
too successfully practiced upon liimself.'' JeTrey. in 1831, 
had got as far as Cobbett in 1807 ; but in 1831 Cobbett 
was far out of sight of Jeffrey, nor would the latter ever 
have caught up to him. 

And here I may mention one other matter, in regard to 
which Cobbett was far ahead of his countrymen. Buckle 
maintains, and indeed proves, that all the laws that 
have ever been made have only tended to hinder and 
obstiiict the wheels of commerce, and that Avlien it is left 
entu'ely free it naturally works best and to the greatest 
advantage of all parties. Cobbett expressed the same 
opinion long before Buckle was boiTi, although, indeed, I do 
not know that he was the first to express such an opinion. 
In his Register for June, 1814, he says : " I disapprove, 
not only of the proposed Corn-bill, but of any and of 
every bill or law that has been, or can be, passed upor the 
subject. I look upon such laws as Avholly useless, and as 
always attended with a greater or less degree of injury to 
the counti-y. I am of opinion that the trade in corn 
should always be perfectly free, let its price be what it 
may ; and that the trade in all other products should be 
the same." It took thirty-two years longer for English 
legislators to come to the same conclusion. 



212 Life of William CobbetL 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

COBBETT IN PAKLIAMENT. 

At last, after the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832, 
Cobbett was elected to Parliament, becominsf one of the 
two members for Oldham, a flourishing manufacturing 
town eight miles from Manchester. Having received in- 
vitations from the radical parties of Manchester as v/ell 
as of Oldham to present himself as their candidate for 
Parliament, he accepted both invitations and stood for 
both seats ; and, after the election, found that although 
he was defeated in Manchester, he was elected in Oldham. 
The people of Oldham, he says, gave on this occasion an 
example of true purity of election ; for neither money nor 
drink had been offered to any of them, nor had any voter 
been canvassed individually for his vote. One cannot 
help thinking that if the same conduct had been observed 
by both pai'ties in other elections at which he had been a 
candidate, he might have been elected long ago. In the 
present case, he seems to have been greatly indebted to 
his colleague, Mr. Pielden, who not only used all his influ- 
ence to secvu'e his election, but generously put him in a 
position to show the necessary qualification — an income 
of £300 a year — to enable him to take his seat. Thus 
Cobbett finally reached the goal for which he had striven 
so hard during the latter years of his life. 

Before the meeting of Parliament, he made a jotirney 
into Ireland and Scotland, in both of which countries he 
was well received, even Daniel O'Connell, notwithstanding 
some sharp encounters which had taken place between 
them, inviting him to his home at Derryman Abbey, 
which invitation, however, he declined at that time, prom- 
ising to visit him on some future occasion. He lectured 



Cobbett ill J Parliament. 213 

in vaiious places in Scotland, and was not a little pleased 
with an address that was presented to him in Edinbm-gli, 
signed by about six liimdi'ed of the inliabitfuits (the "busy 
obscure," Mr. Watson calls them), extolling hiin as " an 
uncompromising advocate of the rights of the people." 

Cobbett devoted himself to his new duties with his 
usual steady industry and attention; but his career in 
Parliament cannot be regai'ded as a success, for he made 
several blunders that greatly lessened his influence there 
and elsewhere, and by no means realized the exj)ecta- 
tions that were formed of him. He was now an old man, 
incapable of adapting himself, with the flexibility of youth, 
to a new career, and being unaccustomed to the foi'ms of 
pai-hamentai'y law and the rules of debate, he was sometimes 
tripi^ed up by less capable but more practiced members ; 
young debaters who were in swaddling clothes when Cob- 
bett was striking giant blows for reform. His triumphs, 
too, had been gained mostly by the pen, and although he 
was by no means a poor speaker, debate was not his forte; 
he was not accustomed to it ; interruptions annoyed him 
and brought hun off his train of thought. Had he, in his 
youth, like the great orators, practiced public speaking in 
debating or other societies, he would probably have cut a 
difi'erent figm'e in Parliament ; for as a conversationist, as 
well as a ^^Titer, he had the power of enchaining all list- 
eners. Dr. Blakely speaks of a conversation he had with 
him lasting eight hom-s, w^hich, he saj^s, was one of the 
greatest intellectual treats he had in his life. 

In the same way in which some distinguished Common- 
ers are said to have smik into the House of Lords, so may 
Cobbett be said to have sunk into Parliament; for he 
caiTied no measui-es and had very little influence on those 
that were caiTied. The peculiar character of the House of 
Commons, as an audience, must also be taken into account, 
Macaulay, who was a member of this same Parliament, 
and to whom Cobbett was once or twice opposed, gives 



214 Life of William Cohhett. 

this striking description of tlie House as an audience: 
" The House of Commons is a place in which I would not 
promise success to any man. I have great doubts even 
about Jeffrey. It is the most peculiar audience in the 
world. I should say that a man's being a good writer, a 
good orator at the bar, a good mob orator, or a good 
orator in debating clubs, is rather a reason for expecting 
him to fail than expecting him to succeed in the House of 
Commons. A place where "VValpole succeeded and Addi- 
son failed; where Dimdas succeeded and Burke failed; 
where Peel now succeeds and Mackintosh fails; where 
Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells ; where Lawi'ence 
and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their 
time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange place." 

The House of Commons, too, was a place where Cob- 
bett had few followers, for he was neither Whig nor Tory, 
and consequently some of his motions were disliked by 
uath parties and voted down by overwhelming majorities. 
The most imprudent step he took in Parliament, — one 
which almost completely destroyed his influence there, — 
was his motion praying his majesty the king to strike out 
the name of Sir Eobert Peel from the list of Privy Coun- 
cillors, because that gentleman had proposed a return 
to specie payments in the year 1819. He pressed the 
motion to a division, although he might have seen that 
the House was dead against him, and the result was : for 
Cobbett 4, and for Peel 298. 

Sir Henry Bulwer, who also sat in the same Parliament 
with Cobbett, thus sums up his career, and describes his 
appearance and the reception he met with in that body : 

"The youthful ploughboy, the private of the Fifty- 
Fourth, after a variety of vicissitudes, had become a mem- 
ber of the British Legislature. Nor for this had he bowed 
his knee to any minister, nor served any party, nor admin- 
istered with ambitious interest to any popular feeling. 
His pen had been made to serve as a double-edged sword, 



Cobhett in, Parliament. 215 

which smote alike Whig and Tory, Pitt and Fox, Castle- 
reagh and Tierney, Canning and Brougham, Wellington 
and Grey, even Hunt and Warthman. He had sneered at 
education, at philosophy, and at negi'o emancipation. He 
had assailed alike Catholicism and Protestantism ; he had 
respected few feelings that Enghshmen respect. Never- 
theless, by force of chai-acter, by abihties to which he had 
allowed the full swing of then* inclination, he had at last 
cut liis way, impatronized and poor, through conflicting 
opinions, into the great council of the British nation. 
He was there, as he had been thi-ough life, an isolated 
man. He owned no followers, and was owned by none. 

" His yeai's surpassed those of any other member who 
ever came into Parliament for the first time expectiiig to 
take an active part in it. He was stout and hale for his 
time of life, but over sixty, and fast advancing to thi'ee- 
score yeai'S and ten. It was an interesting thing to most 
men who saw him enter the House to have palpably 
before them the real, hving Wilham Cobbett. The gene- 
ration among which he yet moved had grown up in awe 
of his name, but few had ever seen the man who bore it. 
The world had gone for years to the clubs, on Saturday 
evenings, to find itself lectui'ed by him, abused by him; 
it had the greatest admiration for his vigorous eloquence, 
the gi'eatest dread of his scar-inflicting lash ; it had been 
livuig with him, intimate with him, as it were, but it had 
not seen hun. I speak of the world's majority; for a few 
persons had met him at county and public meetings, at 
elections, and also in courts of Justice. But to most 
members of Parliament, the elderly, respectable-looking, 
red- faced gentleman, in a dust-colored coat, and drab 
breeches with gaiters, was a strange and almost historical 
curiosity. Tall and strongly built, but stooping, with 
sharj) eyes, a round and ruddy couoitenance, smallish 
featm-es, and a i^ecuhai'ly cynical mouth, he realized pretty 
nearly the idea that might have been formed of him. 



216 Life of William Cohbett 

The manner of his speaking might also have been antici- 
pated. His style in writing was cynical and easy ; such it 
was not umiatural to suppose it might also be in address- 
ing an assembly; and this to a certain extent was the 
case. He was still colloquial, bitter, with a dry, caustic, 
and rather drawling delivery, and a rare manner of arguing 
with facts. To say that he spoke as well as he wrote 
would be to place him where he was not — among the most 
effective orators of his time. He had not, as a speaker, 
the raciness of diction, nor the happiness of illustration, 
by which he excels as a writer. He wanted also some 
physical qualifications unnecessary to the writer, but nec- 
essary to the orator, and which he might, as a younger 
man, have naturally possessed or easily acqmi-ed. In 
short, he could not be at that time the powerful personage 
that he might have been had he taken his seat on the 
benches where he then was sitting, when many surrounding 
him were unknown, even unborn." Still, Bulwer thinks 
he was an effective debater, and "rather a favorite with an 
audience which is only unforgiving when bored." 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

• ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

When Parliament was dissolved in 1834, and Sir Robert 
Peel became Premier, Cobbett was re-elected for Oldham, 
and he returned to his post, although his health was con- 
siderably injured by the entire change of habits which his 
new position made necessary. It would, perhaps, have 
been better if he had never been elected to that position ; 
for the late hours, the want of air, the confinement, and 
the wearisome proceeduigs of Parhament ill agreed with 
the habits of a man who had been accustomed all his life 
to rise at an hour when members of Pai'liament retire, 



Illness and Death. 217 

and to do his best work in the hours which they devoted 
to sleep. Had lie pursued the even tenor of his way, he 
would, no doubt, have lived to a good old age, and have 
done much more service to his country than he ever did 
in Parliament. I cannot help thinking that, in this re- 
spect, his fate had some resemblance to that of our own 
gi'eat editor, Horace Greeley, who resembled Cobbett in 
many points, and who might have been living to this day 
had he never received that unfortvmate nomination for 
the presidential chah". 

Besides the loss of influence, Cobbett suffered also, ac- 
cording to Trevelyan, a loss in the number of subscribers 
to his Register ; for although he still wrote for it, he could 
not of course pay so much attention to it as he formerly 
did, and when his contributions failed, all that the sub- 
scribers took it for failed. 

Long-continued and close attention at the House, when 
a subject that interested him much (Malt Tax) was under 
consideration, brought on and intensified a malady in his 
throat that finally caused his death. Finding that he was 
ill and vmable to speak, he retu'ed to his farm, near Fam- 
ham, in Surrey, Avheve, after a few days, he seemed to 
rally ; but, being impatient of confinement, he had himself 
carried roimd his fai'm in order to observe and pass judg- 
ment on the work that was doing, and, in the evening, 
took tea in the open au*. Duiing the night he seems to 
have had a rela^jse; he became more and more feeble; 
and at ten minutes after one o'clock, on the 18th of June, 
1835, he shut his eyes as if to sleep, leaned back, and 
expu-ed, — an end, says Buhver, singulai'ly jDcaceful for one 
whose hfe had been so full of toil and tm-moil. 

No sooner was the lion dead, than all the world, friends 
and foes, acknowledged his greatness. The writers for 
the press broke out in uutj^ualified expressions of regret 
and- of praise, characterizing the man and his work as 
\inique in the history of his time. The Times pronounced 
10 



218 Life of William Cobhett. 

him the most extraordinary Englishman of his age, and 
called him " the last of the Saxons ;" the Morning Chron- 
icle declared he was one of the most powerful writers 
that England ever produced, unequalled as an advocate; 
and the Standard acknowledged that he was the first 
political wi'iter of his age, wholly without a rival since 
the days of Swift. As for the feelings with which the 
people regarded his death, they were, I think, fitly ex- 
pressed in some lines written on the occasion by Elliott, 
the Corn-Law Rhymer : 

Oh bear him where the rain can fall, 

And where the winds can blow ; 
And let the sun weep o'er his pall, 

As to the grave ye go. 

And in some little lone churchyard, 

Beside the growing corn, 
Lay gentle Nature's stern Prose Bard, 

Her mightiest peasant born ! 

Yes, let the wild-flower wed his grave, 

That bees may murmur near 
When o'or his last home bend the brave, 

And say, "A man lies here I " 

For Britons honor Cobbett's name, 

Though rashly oft he spoke ; 
And none can scorn, and few will blame, 

The low-laid heart of oak. 

For when his stormy voice was loud, 

And Guilt quaked at the sound, 
Benea'tli the frown that shook the pkoud, 

The poor a shelter found. 

Dead Oak, thou liv'st! Thy smitten hands, 

The thunders of thy brow, 
Speak with strange tongues, in many lands, 

And tyrants hear thee now ! 



How he Taayld Grainimir. 219 



P»ART IV. 

His Works, Style, and Character. 
CHAPTEE I. 

HOW HE TAUGHT GRAMMAR. 

Every man Las Ids owu experience with books as with 
other things ; and as the world of books is unhiuited, and 
hfe but too hniited, the communication of that experience 
is sometimes useful, especially to young people. One never 
forgets those books which have caused the mind to see 
new things in hfe, or to see life itself in a new light, and 
which consequently have had a large shai-e in the forma- 
tion of one's chai'acter ; and, on looking back, and recall- 
ing the books one has read, one often finds that the im- 
portant or impression-making books, those which have 
awakened new feelings and given a new tm-n to om* 
minds, Avhich have suddenly aroused a thu'st for knowl- 
edge and helped to make us what we are, are so few that 
they may be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have 
sketched the life of a man whose books were to me the 
source of the fii-st real instruction I ever received. They 
were the fiist that excited interest, that roused ambition 
to learn, and created in me, hke Swift's "Tale of a Tub" 
in Cobbett himself, an intellectual bu'th, a mental awaken- 
ing, a rousing from the long sleep of youthfvd indiffer- 
ence. His grammai'S were the first of his works that I 
became acquainted with ; and after having struggled in 
vain with the di-y-as-dust and obsciu-e jargon of the old 
gvammaiians, I found his works on grammai' a perfect 



220 Life of William Vobhett. 

revelation, a source of intellectual enlightenment ; full of 
refreshment as well as of instruction. In youth, I had 
worked away at conjugations, declensions, parts of sjDeech, 
and so on, until I acquired a pui-e horror of the very name 
of grammar. Cobbett's little English grammar fell into 
my hands, when lo ! astonishing discovery ! I found a sub- 
ject which I had imagined the most wearisome, the most 
difficult, and the most repulsive in existence, suddenly 
change its character, and become positively interesting, 
pleasing, and even amusing ! Never was anybody more 
pleasantly surprised ; never was anybody more effectively 
helped out of difficulty. 

I had the same experience with his French grammar, 
which is almost equally good. Had it not been for that 
grammar, wherein he displays the same entertaining, cap- 
tivating style of teaching, applied to a foreign tongue, I 
should never, I think, have learned the language at all ; 
for I could make neither head nor tail of the old gram- 
mars of that language. I knew a young man who, with 
no other knowledge of French than what he had acquired 
from this grammar, succeeded in earning a living as a 
compositor on a French newspaper in Paris, and subse- 
quently in teaching English and German to French boys 
in the north of France. 

No writer of modern times has made the subject of 
grammar so plain, so intelhgible, so interesting, as Cob- 
bett; his books on this subject are almost as fascinating 
as story-books, and they render easy and pleasant a sub- 
ject which, in other hands, has been the torment and 
despair of boys and gMs from time immemorial. He 
divested grammar of all the learned nonsense of the 
teachers of his time; discarded, so to speak, the old 
clothes of the Greek and Latin scholars, which all the 
grammarians had put on one after another, and he gave the 
subject a new, fresh, pleasing, English dress, capable of 
being appreciated by every person of common capacity. 



Hoio he Taught Grammar. 221 

Mr. Watson and others censm*e him for introducing poH- 
tics into grammai', for making political allusions while 
treating a subject which has no connection with politics. 
How little such critics understand of the art of teaching ! 
It is this very practice of his which sharpens the appetite, 
and gives spice and flavor to an otherwise by no means 
captivating dish. It is this very practice of his, — of illus- 
trating by striking and piquant examples, — which makes 
him so successful as a teacher. Those who have studied 
Enghsh grammar by the ordinary school-books know 
nothing of the subject; they never come to an under- 
standing of it. Take the first hundi-ed men you meet in 
Wall street, and I will wager anything that ninety of 
them will not be able to tell which is right, " It is she," 
or " It is her."' They do not know what the nominative 
or the objective cdle is, because they never could make it 
out from the incomprehensible language of Green, Brown, 
and Black. Or take the first hundi'ed letters of the coiTe- 
spondents of any firm in New York, and I will guai'antee 
that ninety of tJiem have gross grammatical en*ors, — eiTors 
which, of com-se, are not seen by the recipients, because 
they are as much in darkness on the subject as the writers. 
How different from that of ordinary gi'ammarians is the 
manner in which Cobbett handles this subject! He makes 
it not only interesting, but as plain as a pikestaff, as clear 
as daylight. One cannot fail to understand what he means, 
and one cannot fail to be interested in what he says. " His 
power of conveying instruction is indeed almost mi- 
equalled ; he seems rather to woo the reader to leai'n than 
to affect to teach ; he travels with his pupil over the field 
of knowledge in which he is engaged, never seeming to 
forget the steps by which he himself leai'ned. He assumes 
that nothing is known, and no point is too minute for the 
most careful investigation. Above all, the pure mother- 
English in which his instructions ai'e conveyed make him 
a double teacher, for while the reader is ostensibly re- 



222 Life of William Cobbett. 

ceiving instruction on some subject of rural economy, he 
is at the same time insensibly imbibing a taste for good 
sound Saxon English — the very type of the substantial 
matters whereof the author delights to discourse." So 
wrote an appreciative writer in a journal of far-off New 
Zealand. 

The first requisite of a good teacher is to make his 
lessons interesting and attractive. As soon as a subject 
becomes interesting, it is being understood ; ideas on the 
subject are entering the brain. Cobbett lent interest to 
every subject he toiiched: this is the secret of his suc- 
cess. Of coiirse, introducing politics into grammar is 
irregular; but it is the irregularity that succeeds; it is 
like Napoleon's tactics in Italy, irregular and ridiculous 
in the eyes of the old-fashioned generals ; but it succeeds, 
and success is the only criterion of escellence ia instruc- 
tion as well as in war. 

Cobbett enables the learner to overcome the difficulties 
in grammar, to master the situation, to gain what the 
"big- wigs"' were unable to teach him. Two English 
noblemen, — Oxford-bred, no doubt, — declared to Moore^ 
the poet, that " they had never read any EngUsh grammar 
until Cobbett's lately." And no wonder ; other grammars 
were not fit to read, or not worth reading ; they were a 
confused mass of incomprehensible terms ; and probably 
the very first thing they learned, on reading Cobbett's 
grammar, was that they knew nothing of the principles of 
the language they thought they knew so well. All that 
Oxford students knew of English grammar was obtained 
through the study of Greek and Latin, which, like the 
study of any modern language, is a capital aid in the study 
of the mother tongue; but the study of these tongues 
alone will never make any man a good English scholar. 
Without a proper study of the mother-tongue, by itself, 
other linguistic attainments are apt only to spoil the 
student's native idiomatic speech, by giving it a foreign, 



The Charm of Cobhett's Style. 223 

pedantic, and consequently obscure air. This is clearly 
shown in Cobbett's "Six Lessons," in "which he gives 
amusing specimens of the A\'i*etched English then used by 
the University-bred, Greek-and-Latin-crammed magnificos 
of England. 



CHAPTEK II. 

THE CHARM OF COBBETTS STYLE. 

There is such a strong flavor of egotism, of the person- 
ality of the author, in all Cobbett's writings, even those 
on agiicultui'e and political economy, that they at once 
attract attention, and create a desu-e to know more of the 
man who -vnites, as well as of the subject of which he 
waites. And he does not speak of himself because he 
likes to speak of himself ; not at all ; but, as Huzlitt says, 
" because some cu'cumstance that has happened to himself 
is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is 
not the man to shi'ink from giving the best possible illus- 
tration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He 
places us in the same situation with himself, and makes us 
see all that he sees. There is no blindman's-buff, no con- 
scious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no testimonials of 
applause, no abstract senseless self-complacency, no smug- 
gled admiration of his own person by proxy; it is all 
plam and above board." This entire freedom from affec- 
tation or pretence is what makes his egotism so pleasing. 
It is as natiiral as the talk of a child, and he is so interest- 
ing and i^leasing in what he says, that we caimot take 
offence at it. 

His style has been compai'ed to that of Swift, of Defoe, 
of Franklin, of Paine; but, as the same critic well ob- 
ser\'es, no great man is exactly like another, and his style 
is not exactly like any one of these, although it has per- 



22^ Life of WlUicwi Cohbett. 

haps some points of resemblance to each of them. It is 
characterized by strength, clearness, and vehemence ; his 
words are for the most part Saxon, and he speaks with 
such earnestness and force that one feels the very heart of 
the man himself throbbing in every sentence. He is the 
great awakener, or rather the educational revivahst among 
writers; the creator of "new departures" in men's lives; 
the inspirer of interest and love for useful knowledge. 
Like the story-telling preacher to the youth accustomed 
to the dull and argumentative sermon-reading pastor, — 
a surprise and a dehght, — so is Cobbett to a new reader ; 
he suddenly rouses his attention and interest, and the 
now wide-awake reader wonders and regrets that he has 
been so long asleep, while there are so many beautiful, 
useful, and pleasing things to be learned. 

I know of no writer on educational or political subjects 
who possesses such a captivating style ; who is so stirring- 
and attractive, especially to young people; who invests 
every thing he touches, even the driest subjects, with' 
such allturement, such interest ; who is so pleasantly and 
instructively autobiographical, so full of striking and fit. 
tmg illustrations from his own experience; I know of no 
English writer who uses so few foreign or unfamihar 
words, nor any writer who exhibits such an unvarying 
clearness and correctness in his manner of writing. His 
language is probably the purest Enghsh ever written; 
jDlain, downright, forcible, correct. You may read any 
work of his without the help of a dictionary; there is 
hardly an English peasant that will fail to understand 
every word he has written. I find, by actual coiuit, that 
four-fifths of his words are of Saxon origin; so that, in 
this respect, none but Swift, Defoe, and Bunyan can be 
compared to him. Among the hundred volumes of his 
Register, you will search in vain for an obscure passage, 
or a dull one. The London Times, his great enemy, 
characterized his style as possessing "perspicuity un- 



Voinfxtred irith other Political Writers. 225 

equalled and inimitable ; homely muscular vigor ; piuity, 
always simple; and raeiness, often elegant." I have 
heaj'd or read somewhere that a distinguished Englishman 
declaimed that if he were asked by a foreigner to give him 
a specimen of pure English, he would cite, not some pas- 
sage fi'om a luiiversity-bred avithor, but one fi-om the wiit- 
ings of the plain-spoken, self-taught William Cobbett. 
His language is real EngHsh; not Latin-English, hke 
Johnson's, nor German-English, like Carlyle's. 

He observed sharply and felt deeply, and his speech is 
the outgTOwth of this sharp perception and deep feeling ; 
not at all the result of the study of language or style for 
its own sake. For he knew nothing of the ancient classics, 
and cared notlung for any authors except EngHsh and 
French authors. 



CHAPTER III. 

C;0MPARED WITH OTHKU PtJLITICAL WRITERS. 

Political writers are generally but little known dui-ing 
theii' lifetime and forgotten very soon after their death. 
I speak of the great editors ; as for the mass of newspaper 
writers, they do not want to be known, nor does the joui-- 
nal for which they write always wish them to be known ; 
for the impersonality of the writer is supposed to be an 
element of strength to the joui*nal for which he wiites. 
But even the great leader-writers are soon forgotten; for 
the interest of theii" Anitings passes away with the events 
that inspired them, and they are at last known only to 
the historical student. Theii- fame becomes almost hke 
that of the great actors: nothing but their names and 
a misty tradition of their mighty genius remains to suc- 
ceeding generations. Black, — Cobbett's Doctor Black, at 
whom he flung many a shaft, and whose bitterest retort 
10* 



226 Life of William CoUett. 

was calling his History of the Reformation ^'■pig's meat,''' 
— Black, who edited the Morning Chronicle for forty 
years, and who is said to have furnished ideas to Enghsh- 
men for half a centuiy, was very little known dui'ing his 
lifetime, and his writings are now almost as completely 
forgotten as the compositors who put them in type. Take 
the writings of the great editors of our own day and 
country, Raymond, and Bennett, and Greeley ; — who now 
reads any of the ten thousand political articles written by 
these men, giants of the press as they were? Or, let us 
take the more carefully worked out leaders of the two 
great New York weeklies. Harper'' s and the Nation — -who 
would ever think of collecting these articles and printing 
them in book-form ? 

But with CoBBETT, with the writings of William Cob- 
BETT, the case is differenl: : the man and his writings are 
still alive, notwithstanding the deadness of the issues and 
the staleness of the subjects on which he wrote, and will 
continue to live, as long as free, fearless natvu-e and rug- 
ged strength and native elegance are admired. There is 
something perennially fresh about all that he wrote ; every 
ai'ticle he penned is still interesting and attractive ; and all 
this comes from his style ; his incomparable and inimit- 
able style ; his wonderfully strong, living, and lif e-inspu'- 
ing style; this is what keeps them alive; for anything 
that Cobbett touched, like anything touched by the hand 
of one of the old masters, became permanently valuable, 
permanently interesting and attractive. His political 
writings, consisting of about one hundred volumes, are 
not only valuable to the -student of English history, but to 
the student of English hterature ; to every man, indeed, 
who takes an interest in langviage, and doubly so to any 
man preparing to become a writer for the press. 



IToir he Handled Financial Question.'. . 227 

• 

CHAPTER IV. 

HOW IIK HANDLED FINANCIAL (QUESTIONS. 

Mr. John Stuakt Mill, in his Glasgow University Ad- 
dress, says that the most reeent historians are so fully 
aware of the imperfection and partiality of their own ac- 
counts or descriptions of past events, that they now " fill 
their pages with extracts from the original materials, feel- 
ing that these extracts are the real history, and that their 
comments and tlii-ead of naiTative ai'e only helps toward 
understanding it." If there is good reason for jitu'suing 
this plan in ordinary history, sm-ely the reason must be 
doubly good in the history of an author, an idea of whose 
style, thoughts, and aims is to be conveyed. I shall, there- 
fore, make no excuse for giving pretty copious extracts 
from Cobbett's own wi'itings, in order to show what he was 
as a wTiter. Of course, the best plan for a proper acquaint- 
ance with an author, is to go to the original docviments 
themselves; but as every reader may not have them at 
hand, nor have time to make a lai'ge acquaintance with 
them, I shall present some extracts which I think will give 
an idea of what Cobbett was as a writer ; which will, at 
all events, fully repay his perusal, and perhaps sharpen 
his appetite for a fm'ther acquaintance with that sort of 
food of which he will hero get but a taste. 

Open a volume of his political writings at hazard, and 
take the first ai'ticle that meets yoiir eye, and you will 
find yoiu'self almost as much attracted as if you had 
dropped upon a scene in Shakespeai'e or Walter Scott. 
Here, for instance, take this on the di-y subject of finance, 
the Sm-jilus of the Consolidated Fund, Budget of 1805 : 

" The ai't of ^financiering consists principally in multi- 
plying and confusing accounts, till at last no one has 
coui-agc to undertake an examination of them. The way. 



228 Life of 'William Cohhett. 

therefore, to detect a financier of the Pitt school, is, to fix 
upon some one point, and that, too, a point as simple as 
possible in itself, one that will not very easily admit of 
being disfigured and confused. When my attention was 
first attracted to the subject of finance, it appeared to me 
that a gross deception was played off upon the people 
annually ; but an annual exposition of every little wheel, 
peg, and wire in the immense machine would have been 
an endless task. I therefore fixed upon one single point, 
namely, the Surplus of the Consolidated Fund, and upon 
this point I have steadily followed the two first financiers 
of the world (as the Sun and the Oracle call them) from 
the month of December 1802 to the present day. 

" But, first of all, in order to render what I have to say 
intelligible, it may be necessary to explain what is meant 
by the words Consolidated Fund. "Who wou'.d not im- 
agine that it was a national resource ah^eady realized and 
set apart? In the common acceptation of the y^oxdifund, 
it means something collected together. When we talk 
of a fund for the piu'pose of defraying anj expense, we 
never suppose it to depend upon contingencies. If a man 
tells us that he has formed a fimd for a certain object, we 
think him to mean that he has got so much money to- 
gether, and that there he keeps it apart for that special 
purpose. With this notion in then- minds, the people, 
when they talk of* the Consohdated Fund, think that the 
nation has a certain great fund, or stock-purse ; and when 
they hear talk of the surplus of this fund, they think that 
the fund has grovm beyond the demands upon it, and 
that they are in a fair way of becoming as rich as Jews. 
Whether any of them ever imagine that they shall live to 
see the day when the overfiowings will be distributed 
amongst them is more than I can say ; but some of them, 
and those pohtical writers, too, regard the Consolidated 
Fund as intended to pay all the expenses of the nation. . . . 
And, indeed, who can blame people for adoptmg such 



llntr he Handled Flmitic'ud Questlimi^. 22',) 

notions ? Why are not the accounts of the nation stated 
like the accoimts of individuals? "W^iy are words and 
even whole sentences to have a meaning, when applied to 
national accounts, diiferent fi'om that which they have 
when applied to the accounts of individiials % What is it 
that constitutes cant? And what are the pm-poses for 
which cant is used"? 

"Wlio would ever imagine that by the Consolidated 
Fund was meant the money annually received at the Ex- 
chequer yb/* all the permanent taxes of the kingdom ; or, 
in other words, with an exception not worth noticing here, 
the whole income of the iiatlon, war taxes not excej^ted? 
This/knc?, as it is called, is, by several acts of Parliament, 
appropriated to the paying of the interest upon the na- 
tional debt, the expenses of the civil Kst, and the pensions 
and salaries granted by Pai'liament ; and what remains is 
called the surplus of the Consolidated Fund; which sm-- 
plus, be it observed, is all that there is, except the war 
taxes, wherewith to meet the expenses of the army, the 
navy, the ordntince, and the miscellaneous charges, wliich 
fom- heads amount this year to £43,000,000 sterling, while 
the famous surplus amounts to only £1,200,000, leading 
of coui-se £41,000,000 to be raised by war taxes and by 
loans; and accordingly we see that £16,000,000 in war 
taxes are counted on, and we have seen a loan made for 
£20,000,000. Why then confuse and puzzle men by talk- 
ing about a. fund and a sur^olusf'' 

Wliat other writer could or would give such a strikmg 
explanation of the Surplus of the Cousohdated Fimd? 
And what reader wotdd not ever afterwards have a different 
idea of the fund from what he had before ? Would not 
the much-taxed and ever-loyal Englishman feel, after read- 
ing this, as if scales had fallen from his eyes ? By the way, 
there is another fmid, almost equally mysterious, called 
consols, which is an abbreviation for consolidated annui- 
ties fund. This is a funk that constitutes nearly half 



230 Life of William Cobbett. 

the public debt, on which the government pays an annual 
interest, generally three per cent., but which rises or falls 
according to the state of the stock-market. 



CHAPTEE V. 

SPOKEN VEESUS WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 

The strong, living, talk-like air which many of his arti- 
cles possess is no doubt partly owmg to the fact that he 
often dictated his thoughts to an amanuensis — a practice 
which obtains among editors at the present day — ^but 
what he wrote with his own hand is usually of the same 
character. Nearly all his writings sound as if the man 
were talking to you face to face ; some of them more strik- 
ingly so than others. Let me give a single example. The 
Corporation of the City of London, in 1808, presented an 
address and humble petition to the king, praying for an 
inqiiiry into the humiliating Convention of Cintra, whereby 
British generals, after their victory at Vimeu-a, allowed 
the French army to evacuate F'brtugal, with all their arms 
and effects. To which address the king returned rather 
a curt and unsatisfactory answer, declaring that " it is in- 
consistent with the principles of British justice to pro- 
nounce Judgment without previous investigation ;" where- 
upon Cobbett makes the following observations : 

" They (the petitioners) were, as the newspapers state, 
all graciously received, and had the honor to kiss His 
Majesty'' s hand. "What, all? All a kiss a-piece? Mr. 
Waithman, who moved the Address, and who, in makmg 
the motion, talked about Dunkirk and the Helder/ did 
he get a kiss too? I would give a trifle for the ascertain- 
ing of this fact. They kneel, I think I have heard, when 
they kiss. This must have been a highly diverting scene 
to Sii- Arthur Wellesley, who was at court, and who, as ap- 



Sj)okei> versus Written Language? 231 

V ^ ' 

peai's from the newspapers, was the first person presented 

to the king on that day, 'upon his return from Portugal 
upon leave of ahsenee.'' He must have enjoyed this scene. 
The thing was perfect in all its parts. Nothing ever was 
more so. The Londoners ' most humhly approach ' with 
a ' most humble and dutiful ' expression of ' assurances of 
attachment to His Majesty's most sacred person and goii- 
ernment;'' but then, immediately afterwai'ds, they fall to 
expressing opinions relative to the Convention in Portu- 
gal, and to praying that something or other may be done 
about it. "VMiereui^on they get a good hearty slap ; and 
then, being of the true breed, they all kneel down and fall 
to kissmg the hand by which it has been bestowed. To- 
wai'ds such people the king certainly acted with great 
propriety; for, if not only his person was the 'most 
sacred ' person, but his government also the ' most sacred ' 
government; if this was the case, what presvunption it 
was in these citizens to interfere in the exercise of the 
functions of either ! And if this was not the case, then 
the citizens' told a barefaced lie, and, as having done that, 
were well worthy of the rebuke they received. . . . 
I am glad, however, that they kissed the king's hand 
after he had given them what they deserved; because it 
showed that they were penitent; that they will come to 
their senses ; that they had seen the folly, not to say the 
impiety, of presuming to dictate to beings the 'most 
sacred' here below." 

All this, however, which is but playful banter, is only 
prepai'atory to what is coming ; for, on hetuing that the 
petitioners, when they got a great way off, grumbled at 
the king's answei*, notwithstanding they had kneeled down 
and kissed his hand, he suddenly turns on them in dead 
earnest, and exclaims : 

" ^Vhat ! they now whine and snivel because they are not 
treated as then- fathers Avere treated ? Theii- fathers were 
a different sort of men; their fathers would have de- 



232 Life of William CohhetL 

V 
manded inquiry upon other occasions than the present; 
their fathers knew how to demand as well as to implore; 
their fathers were men widely different from them, and 
therefore they merited and received a treatment widely 
different. What ! is it till now that they have waited to 
discover that they are not what their fathers were ? Do 
they now complain of the Pitts and Hawkesburys ; they 
who have supported them in every thing for so many long 
and fatal years of decline of national pride and independ- 
ence? They, who have set up the howl of Jacobiu and 
traitor against every one who dared to move his tongue or* 
his pen in opposition to the acts and designs of the min- 
ister of the, day? They, who have voted, sjpeechified, and 
subscribed against every person who talked of freedom? 
They, who, whether in his making peace or in making 
war, approved of all, aye, all and every individual act of 
the late Pitt ? Do they now complaia of the operation of 
principles, acted upon by his legitimate heii's and suc- 
cessors ? ' Inquiry ! ' What right have such men to ask 
for inqmi'y? They, who have a hundred times voted 
against the principle of inquiry; they, who have been 
maintaining, for more than twenty yeai'S past, the doctrine 
of confidence and irresponsibility/ they who have, upon 
all occasions, represented as disaffected to the country 
every man who has wished for inquiry into the conduct of 
the government? What right have such men to ask for 
inquiry noio in particular ; and with what face can they 
complain that they are sharply rebuked for so doing? 

"Pity them, indeed! Not I: they have their just re- 
ward. If they had not acted a base and degenerate part 
for so many years, that which has now happened, that 
which has now at last urged them to ask for inquiry, 
never would have happened. It is 'in themselves, and 
not in their stars, that they are underlings.' . . . Whim- 
pering, whining creatures, as they are, it is truly a pretty 
jest to hear them at this day calliug for inquiiy ! No, no ; 



mm he Handles the ''Big Wigs:' 23.^ 

they must not hope to succeed in this way. It is too late 
fox* them to assume a new character. Oh, the base flat- 
terers! It stii-s one's gall to hear their complaints. Is 
there a man or a woman or a child, in power, or belonging 
to any one in power, whom they have not eulogized to the 
sides? Have they not praised all that has been done, 
and all that has been intended to be done, by every set 
of men who, for the time being, had the expending of the 
taxes ? Is not this the case? No man can deny that it is. 
Away with them and their complaints, then ! Let them 
howl to the winds ! " 

If this does not sound Hke spoken language, and very 
forcible spoken language too, I do not know what does. 
At all events, those pai'ticular London citizens, to whom 
he thus addi-esses himself, must have considei-ed it the 
most forcible language they were acquainted with, spoken 
or written. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOW HE HANDLES THE "BIG WIGS." BTJEKE AND ADAM SMITH; 

PITT, FOX, AND PAINE. 

The following attack on two famous men will afford a 
good idea of his humorous-satmcal manner : 

"We now come to the astrologers^ Burke and Adam 
Smith. The former of these discovered, from the aspect 
of the stars, I suppose, several yeai'S ago, that taxes were 
like deios, which, rising up and forming themselves into 
clouds, fall again over the country in refreshmg showers. 
This was so delightful a discovery that this philosopher 
has, from that horn- to this, been a great favorite with 
every set of ministers, and with the whole of the 'Col- 
lective Wisdom ' in both branches, whether in leaf, flower 
and fnait-bearmg state, or in the winter of- opposition. 



234 Life of William Oobbett. 

They all, from Mr. Bennett to Lord Castlereagh, call him, 
that '■ great man.'' Canning calls him 'the departed sage;'' 
and you frequently hear them quoting his words with as 
much reverence and solemnity as a Methodist parson 
quotes the Bible, This ^ great man^ made the discovery 
about the dews just after Pitt had caused a most refresh- 
ing and fructifying shower to fall upon this great Irish 
adventiH-er himself, who, for a pretty long life had been 
opposed to, if not outrageously abusing, Pitt and his 
predecessors ; but who, having become the most fulsome 
eulogist of Pitt, found fall upon him the contents of a 
cloud, sucked up from the dews of taxation, and consisting 
of three thousand pounds a year pension for himself, dm-- 
ing life ; twelve hundred pounds a year pension for his 
wife, dtuing her life after him; and two thousand five 
hundred pounds a year to be paid to his executors after his 
death, one half of it for three lives, and the other half of 
it for two lives, one of the lives on each half being still in 
existence ; and, of coiu-se, the two thousand five hundred 
pounds being still paid to those executors! 

"About seventy thousand pounds of principal money 
have dropped out of this cloud, collected together from 
the dews of taxation ! Well may the astrologer be called 
a ^ great man!'' Well may his doctrine have such a mul- 
titude of disciples ! Well may the Committee appeal to 
him with regard to another branch of astrology, connected 
with agricultural distress. This doctrine is that 'years 
of scarcity or plenty do not come alternately, but in. pretty 
large cycles, and irregxdarly .'' Doctor Adam Smith (most 
interesting to know !) has made the same discovery. Only 
to think of a '■pretty large cycle ! ' Well ; but that is not 
all. ' These ' cycles ' or rounds of years do not come reg- 
ularly, it seems, but irregularly. You will observe the 
word pretty before large. You will remember that a cycle 
means a periodical space of time : you will then observe 
that these periodical spaces of time come irregularly ; that 



How he JIandlefi the ''Tiuj Wigs." 235 

is to say, not. periodically ; and then you will, I think, my 
good lords of the soil, have a jumble in yoiu* heads, a con- 
fusion of ideas, a bewilderment so complete as to drive 
oxit, if anj'ihing can, all thoughts of the fundholder. Good 
God ! to talk cycles of scai'city and of plenty ; to talk 
about unperiodical periods ; to send you to the stars un- 
der the guidance of gi-eat Irish and gi-eat Scotch philoso- 
phers ; when you are wanting to know when and how, in 
God's name, you should get at your rents ! " 

As a specimen of satu-e, I think this is capital; yet 
there is nothing in the whole history of Cobbett that sm-- 
prises me more than his want of appreciation of Adam 
Smith. It will be remembered he could make nothing of 
him when he studied his Wealth of JVations. Was Smith 
really too deep for him? Or was it his style that was 
displeasing to him? Or was it because he was a Scotch- 
man? For Cobbett was, like many Englishmen, very jeal- 
ous of Scotchmen. 

Here is another amusing, though somewhat coarsei-, 
attack on two equally famous men. 

"Wlien Pitt came into power, in 1784, the debt 
amounted to £250,000,000 and some odd thousands. The 
people were, at this time, fools, despicable fools, enough 
to be divided into two pai'ties. Pittites and Foxites ; 
nabies taken from two men, the first of whom was made 
by nature for a showman or an auctioneer, and the latter 
for a jovial companion of some one who had more money 
than could well be spent, even on the turf or at the gam- 
ing-table. Both had what is very Avell called the ' gift of 
the gab ;' both were descended from fathers who had fat- 
tened pretty well on the jDublic money ; both were second 
sons ; Pitt came after his brother, as claimant of the title 
and 2)er2)etual jycusiou given to liis father ; Fox came after 
his elder brother's son, to the title given to his, and he 
(Fox) was, and had been from his infancy, a shieeure 
placettia/t. They were both great talkers ; l)ut, as events 



236 Life of William Cobhett. 

have proved, neitlier was fit to have the management of a 
nation's affairs, any more than any two tinselled chaps 
that you might snatch off a mountebank's stage. 

" They were talkers ; one was the ' English Cicero ' and 
the other the 'English Demosthenes.' The parsons, and 
other review and magazine and newspaper writers, placed 
themselves, some on the side of Cicero, for what was to 
be got then / others on the side of Demosthenes, for what 
might be got thereafter • and thus was the nation noodled 
along in the belief that it had the two greatest men in the 
world! Pitt began his career with a project iox paying 
off the national debt. Nothing could be more popular. 
The nation did not consider that it could never be paid 
off, unless the means came out of its property and labor ; 
that it could not be paid off by legerdemain. However, 
such was its anxiety to be relieved from the dreadful load, 
that, like the alarmed patient, it was ready to listen to 
any quackery. Pitt's scheme was, to raise a million a 
year in taxes, to form a Sinking Fund, which was to go on 
accumulating at compou7id interest^ and which would jt)ay 
off the debt in forty years ! Bravo ! ' Heaven-born min- 
ister ' came from every throat in the kingdom. ' What a 
man! What a surprising young man!' His father, ac- 
cording to Burke, was Elijah, and his son had ' caught 
the mantle ! ' The nation is now suffering, and has l6ng 
to suffer, for its follies of that day. Demosthenes, who 
opposed Cicero in everything else, joined him here, and 
proposed one of the clauses in the famous Bill; and there 
you heard the old conundrumites congratulating each 
other that these ' two great men had co-operated to bring 
to perfection this great national work!'' 

" Paine came soon afterwards, and told them that this 
scheme was a delusion: that it was taking out of one 
pocket and putting into the other ; that it was like set- 
ting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare, and 
that the farther the man ran the farther he would be 



How he JTandles the ''Bi<j Whjxr 237 

behind. I demoustrated in 'Paper against Gold' that 
this scheme was as sheer a piece of folly as was ever in- 
vented ; and the idea of its ever being capable of lessen- 
ing the national burdens has, for some years past, been 
openly ridiculed, even in Parliament itself! After all 
this, the Scotch talk of a Doctor (they are all doctors) 
'HojiALTOx, mon,' who, o«/y the other dai/, made the same 
discovery! [Is not this English jealousy of the Scotch 
something like our Southern jealousy of the Yankees?] 
However, no matter who made the fii'st discovery, it is 
now discovered that this joint-job of Cicero and Demos- 
thenes was as contemptible a piece of foolery as the world 
ever witnessed ; and that the ' Wisdom of Par-r-r-rr-li-a- 
ment' (as gi'eat, empty, starmg, botheration Pitt used to 
call it) has, instead of paying off the debt, swelled it up to 
four times, and in reality to more ihsiufour times its then 
amount." 

There was a time when he, too, was an admirer and fol- 
lower of both " Cicero*' and " Demosthenes," one after the 
other; but, as this passage sufficiently shows, he got 
bravely over that. Few men, however, notwithstanding 
all his faults, are remembered with more kindly feelings 
than Chai-les James Fox, whose heai't was as noble as his 
principles and poHcy were liberal. As for Pitt, it may be 
sai(i that his whole mistaken pohcy was owing to the in- 
fluence of George III., under whom his entii-e cai'eer as 
minister was passed. The king — notoriously a man of 
mediocre capacity, at times quite sunk into idiocy — 
seems to have dommated over him. Had Pitt been a 
man of real intellectual power and of wide and extensive 
knowledge, eloquent and persuasive, he would have had 
no difficulty in moulding the mind of this monarch to his 
views ; but he had no such power or knowledge ; and the 
fact that he did not, or could not, influence the king, 
proves that he was as impotent and incapable as the kuig 
himself. "What a humiliating picture the historian Buckle 



238 - Life of William Cohhett. 

draws of this miserable king, who reigned over the vast 
British empire for sixty long years: "Every liberal senti- 
ment, every thing approaching to reform, nay, even the 
mere mention of inquiry, was an abomination in the eyes 
of that narrow and ignorant prince. Without knowledge, 
without taste, without even a glimpse of one of the 
sciences, or a feeling for one of the fine arts, education 
had done nothing to enlarge a mind which nature had 
more than usually contracted. Totally ignorant of the 
history and resources of foreign countries, and barely 
knowing their geographical position, his information was 
scarcely more extensive respecting the people over whom 
he was called to rule. . . . During the sixty years of 
his reign, he, with the sole exception of Pitt, never will- 
ingly admitted to his councils a single man of great 
ability ; not one whose name is associated with any meas- 
ure of value either in domestic or in foreign policy. Even 
Pitt only maintained his position in the State by forget- 
ting the lessons of his illustrious father, and abandoning 
those liberal principles in which he had been educated, 
and with which he entered pubhc life. Because George 
in. hated the idea of reform, Pitt not only Telinquished 
what he had before declared to be necessary, but did not 
hesitate to persecute to the death the party with whom 
he had once associated in order to obtain it. Because 
George III. looked upon slavery as one of those good old 
customs which the wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated, 
Pitt did not dare to use his power for procuring its aboli- 
tion, but left to his successors the glory of destroying that 
infamous trade, on the preservation of which his royal 
master had &et his heart. Because George III. detested 
the French, of whom he knew as much as he knew of the 
inhabitants of Kamtchatka or of Tibet, Pitt, contrary to 
his own judgment, engaged in a war with France by which 
England was seriously imperilled and the English people 
bui'dened with a debt that their remotest posterity will 



CcMetf'.t Wf'f. <i)id I rumor. . 239 

l)e unable to pay." Is not this single "modern instance" 
enough to disgust any man with royalty '? In the light of 
these facts, how absurd the conduct of Dr. Johnson ap- 
peal's, in regarding his accidental interview with George 
TTT. in the hbrary as something approaching an interview 
with God Almighty himself ! 



CHAPTER VII. 

COBBETT's wit AWD HUMOK. THE DEVIL IN AN ENGLISH 

PARADISE. 

Although Cobbett was generally in downright earnest 
about all he undertook, he often hit off an opponent in a 
laugliing, bantering way that was far more effective than 
serious attack. Here are two amusing examples from his 
Rural Rides. He is speaking of the game-laws, and of a 
poor poacher that had been shot. 

" Yet, admire with me, Reader, the singular turn of the 
mind of Sir James Mackintosh, whose whole soul appears 
to have been long bent on the ' amelioration of the penal 
code,' and who has never said one single word about this 
ne^c and ')nost terrible part of it ! Sir James, after years 
of incessant toil, has, I believe, succeeded in getting a 
repeal of the laws for the punishment of '• vntchcraft^ of 
the very existence of which laws the public was unac- 
quainted. But the devil a word has he said about the 
game-laws, which put into the jails a full third part of 
the prisoners, and to hold which prisoners the jails have 
a<'tually been enlarged in all pai'ts of the country. Singu- 
lar tm'n, of mind! Singulai* '■ hurnanity ! ^ Ah, Sir James 
knoAvs very well what he is about ! He understands the 
mind of his constituents at Kiugsborough too well to med- 
dle with game-laws. He has a \frieiul^ I dare say, that 
knows more about game-laws than he does. However, the 



240 Life of Willimn Oobbett. 

poor vntches are safe ; thank Sir James for that. Mr. Car- 
lisle's sister and Mrs. Wright are in jail, and may be there 
for life; but the poor vntches are safe ! No hypocrite ; 
no base pretender to religion ; no atrocious, savage, black- 
hearted wretch, who woidd murder half mankind rather 
than not live on the labors of others ; no monster of this 
kind can j^f^rsecute the poor witches, thanks to Sir James, 
who has obtained security for them in all their rides 
through the ah', and in all their sailings upon the horse- 
ponds ! " 

Is not the following much more amusing than the silly 
misspelled witticisms of our modern comic writers ! Those 
squeamish and over-delicate people, however, who cannot 
bear to hear of trousers undei* any other name than " un- 
mentionables " or "inexpressibles," or of legs under any 
other name than "limbs," had better skip this passage; 
it is not suitable for them ; it may shock their sensitive, 
"Watson-iike nerves. Cobbett, who was eminently a clean- 
minded and clean-lived man, who never penned an inde- 
cent joke in his life, had no feelings but contempt for 
people who were afraid to call a spade a spade. 

" This is a great nut year. I saw them hanging very 
thick on the wayside, during" a great part of this day's 
ride ; and they put me in mind of the old saying, ' A great 
nut year a great bastard year ;' that is to say, the suc- 
ceeding year is a great year for bastards. I once asked a 
farmer who had often been overseer of the poor, whether 
he really thought there was any ground for this old say- 
ing, or whether he thought it was mere banter. He said 
he was sure there were good grounds for it ; and he even 
cited instances in proof, and mentioned one particular 
year, in which there ^ ere four times as many bastards as 
had ever been born in the parish before ; an effect which 
he ascribed solely to the crop of nuts of the year before. 
Now, if this be the case, ought not Pai-son Malthus, Law- 
yer Scarlett, and the rest of the tribe, to turn their atten- 



Cobbetfs WU and lliimor. 241 

tion to the nut trees ? The Vice Society, too, with that 
holy man "NVilberforce at its head, ought to look out sharp 
after these mischievous nut trees. A law to cause them 
all to be grubbed up and thi-own into the fire would cer- 
tainly be far less mireasonable than many things which 
we have seen and heai-d of." 

These Riu'al Rides are easy, natural, chatty reports of 
what he saw while traveling on horseback tlu'ough the 
vai'ious counties, towns, villages, and hamlets of England. 
"My object," he says, "was not to see inns and tiu'n-pike 
roads, but to see the country, to see the farmers at home, 
and to see the laborers in the fields ; and to do this, you 
must go either on foot or on horseback. With a gig, you 
cannot get about amongst bye-lanes, and across fields, 
through b:idle-ways and hunting-gates ; and to tramp it 
is too slov>-, leaving the labor out of the question, and 
that is not a trifle." 

A more pleasant and profitable way of seeing a coimtry 
can hardly be imagined; nor a more pleasant description 
of it than that given in the Rides. But his account is 
now out of date, as he regai'ds everything from a political 
point of view, and many of the things he speaks of exist 
no longer. He gives, as I said, a poHtical twist to every- 
thing, even a beautiful landscape or the whooping-cough. 
"This pretty valley of Chilworth has a run of water 
which comes out of the high hills, and which occasionally 
spreads into a pond ; so that there is, in fact, a series of 
ponds connected by this run of water. This valley, which 
seems to have been created by a bountiful Providence as 
one of the choicest retreats of man, which seems formed 
for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by un- 
gi'ateful man, so perverted as to mtike it instrumental in 
effecting two of the most damnable purposes ; in cai'rying 
into execution two of the most wicked inventions that 
ever sprang from the mind of man under the influence of 
the de\-il! namely, the making of (junpoimler and of bank- 
11 



242 Life of WUUa?n Cobbett. 

notes. Here in this tranquil spot, where the nightingales 
are to be heard earlier and later in the year than in any 
other part of England; where the first bursting of the 
buds is seen in spring ; where no rigor of season can ever 
be felt; where everything seems formed for precluding 
the very thought of wickedness ; this spot has the devil 
fixed on as one of the seats of his grand manufactory, and 
perverse and ungrateful man not only lends him his aid, 
but lends it cheerfully. ... To think that the springs 
which God has commanded to flow from the sides of these 
happy hills for the comfort and the delight of man ; to 
think that these springs should be perverted into means 
of spreading misery over a whole nation ; and that, too, 
under the base and hypocritical pretence of promoting its 
credit axidirisimtsiinmg lis honor And faith/''' . . . 

"Ever since the middle of March, I have been trying 
remedies for the whooping-cough, and have, I believe, 
tried everything, except riding, wet to the skin, two or 
three hours amongst the clouds on the South Downs. 
This remedy is now under trial/ or, as Lord Liverpool 
said, the other day of the L'ish Tithe Bill, it is ^ under 
experiment.' I am treating my disorder (with better suc- 
cess, I hope), in somewhat the same way that the pretty 
fellows at Whitehall treat the disorders of poor Ireland." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HOW COBBETT COULD PRAISE. INTERVIEW WITH A CHIMNEY- 
SWEEP. — canning's "instinctive patriotism." 

Heartily and unsparingly as Cobbett could lash those 
whom he thought wrong, he could praise with equal 
heartiness those whom he thought right. The following 
pleasing passage from the Rural Rides will show this 
pretty plainly. He is speaking of an estate called Weston 



IToio Cohhett Could Praise. 243 

Grove, neai* Netley Abbey, and of its owner, Mr. Cham- 
berlayne : 

" Every thing that Natui'e can do has been done here ; 
and money most judiciously employed, has come to her 
assistimce. Here are a thousand things to give pleasui'e 
to any rational mind; but there is one thing which, in my 
estimation, surpasses, in the pleasui*e of contemplating, all 
the la^vns and all the groves, and all the gardens and all 
the game, and everything else ; and that is, the real unaf- 
fected goodness of the owner of the estate. He is mem- 
ber of Pai'hament for Southampton; he has other fine 
estates ; he has great talents ; he is much admii'ed by all 
who know him ; but he has done more by his justice, by 
his just way of thinking with regard to the laboring people, 
than in all other ways put together. This was nothing 
new to me, for I was well informed of it several years ago. 
though I had never heai'd him speak of it in my life. 
"WTien he came to this place, the common wages of day- 
laboring men were thirteen shillings a week, and the 
wages of cai'penters, bricklayers, and other mechanics 
Avere in proportion. These wages he has given, from that 
time to this, without any abatement whatever. "With 
these wages a man can live, having at the same time other 
advantages attending the working for such a man as ]\Ii'. 
Chamberlayne. He has got less money in his bags than 
he would have had if he had ground men down in their 
wages ; but if his sleep be not sounder than that of the 
close-fisted wi'etch that can walk over grass and gi'avel, 
kept in order by a poor creature who is half-starved; if 
his sleep be not sounder than the sleep of such a wretch, 
then all that we have been taught is false, and there is no 
difference between the man who feeds and the man who 
stai"Aes the poor. ... 

" I know of no county where the poor ai*e worse treated 
than in many parts of this county of Hants. It is good 
to know of one instance in which they ai'e well treated ; and 



244 ■ Life of William Gobbett. 

I deem it a real honor to be under tlie roof of liim who 
has uniformly set so laudable an example in this most 
important concern. "What are all his riches to me? They 
form no title to my respect. 'Tis not for me to set myself 
up in judgment as to his taste, his learning, his various 
qualities and endowments ; but of these, his unequivocal 
works, I am a competent judge. I know how much good 
he must do ; and there is a great satisfaction in reflecting 
on the great happiness he must feel when, laying his 
head upon his pillow of a cold and dreary winter night, he 
reflects that there are scores — aye, scores upon scores — of 
his country people, of his poor neighbors, of those whom 
the Scrij^tiue denominates his brethren, who have been 
enabled, through him, to retue to a warm bed after spend- 
ing a cheerful evening, and taking a full meal by the side 
of their own fire. People may say what they will about 
happiness, but I can figure to myself no happiness sur- 
passing that of the man who falls to sleep with reflections 
like these in his mind. 

" Now, observe, it is a duty on my part to relate what I 
have here related of Mr. Chamber layne ; not a duty to- 
wards him, for I can do him no good by it, and I do most 
sincerely believe that both he and his equally benevolent 
sister would rather that their goodness remained unpro- 
claimed ; but it is a duty towards my country, and par- 
ticularly towards my readers. Here is a striking and a 
most valuable practical example. Here is a whole neigh- 
borhood of laborers living as they ought to live ; enjoying 
that happiness which is the just reward of their toil. And 
shall I suppress facts so honorable to those who are the 
causes of this hajDpiness — facts so interesting in them- 
selves, and so likely to be useful in the way of example ; 
shall I do this, aye, and besides this, tacitly give a false 
account of Weston Grove, from the stupid and cowardly 
fear of being accused of flatteiing a rich man ? " 

In order to illustrate his argument, Cobbett often hap- 



T/itej-v/'eir trif/i a Cliltuney-nvseep. 24/) 

pily aviiils himself of some passing incident, some acci- 
dental cii'cuiusttuu'e occurring while he is wxiting. This 
is the way in which a competent teacher conveys instruc- 
tion : he seizes upon whatever is nearest at hand to illus- 
trate or enforce the matter in consideration. "NVliile showing 
(1821) that prices ai-e falling; that the reduction of wages 
is ceasmg ; that the laborer is getting his due again ; and 
"that the employer will never be able to get him down in 
proportion to the fall in food " — (in fact, the very state 
of things which recently presented itself in the United 
States) — he illustrates the subject by the following 
mcident : 

*■' Only this very morning, a chimney-sweeper, who had 
swept my kitchen-chimney, came to my study (none of 
the rest of the family being up) to be paid his eighteen 
2yence. 

'"Eighteen pence! Is not that a good deal"?' 'I have 
had that price /or years for sweepuag that chimney.' 

" ' Yes ; and that's the very reason why you ought not 
to have so much now.'' 'Why so, su-?' 

"'"NVliy? ^\Tiy, eighteen pence will now buy twice as 
much bread as it bought then.' ' I don't knov^ anything 
about that, su"; but, then, think of the sootf 

" ' Soot ! what is the soot to me. You have it now, and 
you could no more than have it before.' 'Aye, su*, but I 
used to sell it for 20f?. a bushel. I used to have it bought 
up faster than I could get it ; and now I have got wagon- 
loads, and can not get Id. for it.' 

" ' So, then, as sweejD you gain, and as soot-merchant 
you lose.' ' Just so, su-.' 

" ' Here, then, take your eighteen pence. But (calling 
him back) what do people do without yom* soot now'?' 
' I don't know, I'm sure ; but I 'spose they have got no 
money, now things be low, and that they pay men in vic- 
tuals, and till the ground more, and don't buy soot.' 

'• ' There ! there ! ' said I, ' say no more ; you ai"e no 



246 Life of William. Oobhett. 

sweep, you are a philosopher. Go ; go to Scarlett ! for 
God's sake go to Scaelett ! ' '■Scarlett!'' said he. 

" ' Aye,' said I, ' it is not any thing of that color; it is a 
man; and his dress very much resembles yours, except 
his wig, which ought to have under it a little of what you 
have got in that black head of yours.' ' Oh,' said he, 
drawing down his chin, turning up the whites of his eyes, 
and smiling, ' I 'spose you mean a lawyer / ' And giving 
himself a gentle turn, as much as to say, ' no, thank ye ! ' 
off he walked to his soot-bag, with his 18f?. in his pocket."' 

How often has Cobbett exposed the confusion of ideas, 
the incoherent jumbling of unsuitable things, which was 
so common among the orators of the day ! What havoc 
he made with Johnson's sonorous and pretentious sen- 
tences ! He had, like Wellington, a remarkable power of 
detecting the blunders and weaknesses of the enemy. 
We have seen how strikingly he showed the absurdity of 
Burke's '•'•pretty large cycles;" and many another famous 
orator he tripped up in a similar manner. When Canning, 
for instance, spoke of the people's attachment to the soil 
as " instinctive patriotism," Cobbett observed that instinct 
was a quality peculiar to animals, and that such patriotism 
was really nothing more than a heast-like feeling, a cattle- 
like attachment to the eai'th. "Thus neat-cattle and 
pigs," says he, " though better fed and lodged in a new 
situation, are always hankering after the place where they 
were bred. An 'instinctive patriot' of this sort lately 
found its way from Botley to Eingwood, in spite of hedges 
and turnpike roads." We may be sure. Canning never 
spoke of instinctive patriotism after that. 

Cobbett thought rightly that the attachment of people 
to their native country is founded in their love of the 
laws, the institutions, the fame of that country, or in the 
value which they set upon the reputation, the security, 
the freedom from oppression, and the happiness which 
they derive from belonging to that country. Still we 



Aiialysis of a Prince's Letter. 247 

certainly do love the very soil on which we were born 
and bred ; for there ai'e some people who have nothing 
else to love in then- country, and yet love it all the more 
for its very misery. "Wliat part have the laws, the insti- 
tutions, the security, and the freedom of his country in 
the Polander's love of Poland'? or, in the Ii'ishman's love 
of Ireland"? It is the associations, the recollections of the 
happy, youthful days we have spent on native soil, that 
causes this love. Cobbett elsewhere defines patriotism as 
having its foimdation "in that anxious desu-e which every 
man of sound sense aad honest natiu-e has to see pre- 
sen'ed untaiiiished the reputation of that country which 
he is obliged to own, whose name he can never shake off, 
fi'om whose calamities he may possibly flee, but in all 
whose disgraces he must inevitably share." If this is 
true, what deep disgrace every honest Irishman must feel 
at the endless aiTay of atrocious miu'ders and assassina- 
tions that have lately stained the soil of Ireland ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

ANALYSIS OF A PKINCe's LETTER. 

How clearly and sharply he brings out the real signifi- 
cance of the Duke of York's letter to the Sj^eaker of the 
House of Commons ! The reader will remember that the 
duke was found guilty of clandestinely selling commis- 
sions in the army, and approiDriating the proceeds to his 
own use and that of his mistress. I have heai'd of a Rus- 
sian grand-duke who, in the late war with Turnkey, re- 
ceived fi'om two Jews an enormous sum for secui*ing to 
them the contract for provisioning the ai*my. Talk of the 
corruptions of republicans! Why, their pickings are 
nothing compai'ed with the enormous sweepstakes of these 
royal rascals. For " tricks that ai'e vaiu and ways that 



248 TJfe of WiUiam Cobhett. 

are dark," comraend me to the gentry of this ilk. The 
Duke of York, in his letter to the Speaker, declares, 
"upon his honor, as a prince, his innocence in these 
corrupt transactions," and that he had not " the slightest 
knowledge or suspicion that they existed at all," and " con- 
fidently hoped " that the House of Commons would not 
"adopt any proceedings prejudicial to his honor;" yet 
that if the House should consider his "innocence ques- 
tionable," he claimed of their justice that he "should 
not be condemned without trial, or be deprived of 
the benefit and protection which*' is afforded to every 
British subject ... in the ordinary administration of 
the law." One of the members spoke of this letter as an 
attack on the privileges of the House, which was denied 
by Mr. Perceval, who maintained that the duke merely 
asserted his innocence, and requested that, should that 
innocence still be doubted, he might be allowed to go to 
trial, without any further proceedings against him ; in all 
of which he (Mr. Perceval) saw nothing unconstitutional 
or improper. Upon which Cobbett remarks : 

"No? Well said, Mr. Perceval! It may be 'constitu- 
tional,' for that is a very accommodating word; and it 
may be ' proper ' too ; but if the letter has any meaning 
at all in it, it is this : that the House will do wrong, that 
they will be guilty of an act of injustice, if they take any 
step in the business prejudicial to the duke ; and that, at 
most, they ought to leave his conduct to be judged of by 
others than themselves. This, indeed, is admitted by JMr. 
Perceval; it can not be denied; and if this be not dic- 
tating to the House what they ought, or rather what they 
ought not, to do, I know not the meaning of the word 
dictate. There may have been letters sent by accused 
persons to the House of Commons, but I defy Mr. Perce- 
val to produce an instance of such a letter as this ; a letter 
expressing a ' confident hope ' that the House, who have 
taken evidence upon the case, will not, to the prejudice 



Analysis of a Prince's Letter. 240 

of the accused, proceed to any step gi-ounded uj-ton that 
evidence. Then, observe, the whole of the evidence taken 
by the House, and many parts of which great numbers of 
the members have expressly declared to be unshaken, — 
the whole of this evidence, in a lump, not excepting even 
that contained in his own letters and note, is branded as 
false by the party accused. He presumes, before the 
summing up has taken place in the House, to tell them 
how they ought to decide upon the quality of the evi- 
dence; he, upon his bai"e word, and without pretending 
to possess the means oi proving '9^\xQk, he says, takes upon 
him to tell the House that they ought to regard as a hai" 
eveiy person who has given evidence against him ! . . . 
Well, the duke has had his vnsh in regard to the mode of 
Inquiry. The inquu-y is over. It has taken place. It is 
closed. And what does he now, in his own name, and 
under his own hand, tell this same House of Commons ? 
"Why, that he has thus far been 'deprived,' aye, '■deprived^ 
of what IMi-. AVardle and IVIi'. Wilberforce and Mr. Folke- 
stone, contrai-y to his wishes, expressed by Sir. Perceval, 
wanted him to have; and, upon the ground of this de- 
privation, amongst other gi'ounds, he desii'es the House 
not to adopt any proceeding prejudicial to his honor, 
though he a2)pears to have no sort of objection to their 
acquitting hlin. This, I think, does very far surpass 
everything of the sort that I ever heard of in all my life. 
I have seen many remarkable ijistances of the presumj)tion 
of power ; but anything like this, or neai'ly approaching a 
resemblante to it, I never before witnessed." 

The duke and his friends, no doubt, thought the very 
same thing of the presumption of the press; and they 
lost no time in causing an editor who dared to speak so 
presumptuously of a person of such high character to be 
put in his proper place, viz., a dungeon. 
11* 



250 Life of William Cobbett. 

GHAPTEE X. 

HIS DEFENCE OF THE LABOEING CLASSES. 

Although politics was Cobbett's chief study, there is 
nothing that he loved better, nothing that he was better 
acquainted with, than agriculture. He was very fond of 
books on agriculture ; of agricultural experiments ; of in- 
troducing exotic plants into England; of initiating his 
children into all the mysteries of agriculture. And — as 
has been observed by his biographer of 1835 — among all 
his political and personal changes, among all his varia- 
tions of creed and company, there is one class that he 
ever faithfully adhered to, on whose side he ever battled 
bravely, in whose interest he spent almost the last hours 
of hfe — the tillers of the soil, the farmers and farm- 
laborers of England. In the interest of this class his 
very best and most effective writings were produced ; for 
there was nothing he thought more of, nothing he appre- 
ciated more highly (as we have seen in his praise of Mr. 
Chamberlayne), than the improvement of the conditions 
of the laboring poor; and he never wrote better than 
when he explained or described something connected 
with farming or the Hfe of the farmer. 

"It was natural that rural affairs," says Mr. Edward 
Smith, " in which he delighted, and amongst which he 
heartily believed that the highest domestic felicity was to 
be found, should derive from his pen the highest charms. 
There never lived, probably, a writer equal to' Cobbett iu 
rural description : one who could, in the midst of some 
angry polemic, so readily turn off .for a moment and pre- 
sent his reader with a country picture ; perfectly life-like, 
glowing with color and realism ; who could make a mere 
gardening-book entertaining." 

No sooner does he come to speak of the farmer than he 
instantly displays an earnestness, a soHcitude for his wel- 



Jlis Defence of the Jjuborhig Classen. 251 

fare, that betrays a dii'ect, a personal interest in liim. 
Take, for example, the follo\%ing passage from his Letter 
to IMi'. Hayes, which is the last of our extended quota- 
tions, and -which, I think, cannot be surpassed for force 
of expression, clearness of statement, and vehemence of 
feeUng : 

" Let us hope that this Bill [Lawyer Scarlett's Celibacy 
Bill, 1821, which was intended to check the breeding of 
childi'en] is the last of the unnatural offspring of that ac- 
cm'sed paper-money system, which has, as I have clearly 
proved, stai-ved and degraded the laboring classes of Eng- 
land. Many thousands who have supported this system 
have not been awai'e of the manner in which it worked, 
and from these I will not be so unjust as to exempt the 
ministers themselves, Pitt and all ; for it is impossible to 
believe that human beings could have intentionally in- 
vented and fostered so cruel and hellish a system. The 
ministers ai'e doing all they can do to restore us to hap- 
piness; for to talk of happiness, r^a^AOXidX prosperity and 
happiness, while millions are in a state of stai'vation and 
degradation, is almost blasphemy. The ministers, in spite 
of all the base endeavors to intimidate them, have given 
\us gold and a return to o. just balance for the laborer. 
. . . As for me, who has so much to forgive as I have? 
Who has been so persecuted by this long train of Pittite 
ministers 1 Yet, so grateful do I feel for the good now 
done to the laboring classes, that I fi'eely forgive them ; 
yea, Sidmouth and all; and I am not a little pleased 
at the thought that he (Canning) who made a jest of 'the 
revered and ruptured Ogden,' has withdi-awn himself from 
all participation in this forgiveness-demanding spuit. 
The ministers may, nay they must have been deceived ; 
they were dazzled with the splendid effects of a plunder 
of the laboring classes. I, myself, in the eai'ly pai't of my 
writing life, was deceived in the same way; but when, in 
1814, I revisited the English laborer's dwelling, and that, 



252 Life of William Cobbett. 

too, after having so recently witnessed the happiness of 
laborers in America ; when I saw that the clocJc was gone ; 
that even the Sunday coat was gone ; when I saw that those 
whom I had known the most neat, cheerful, and happy 
beings on earth, and these my own countrymen, too, had 
become the most wretched and forlorn of human beings, 
I looked seriously and inquired patiently into the matter ; 
and this inquiry into the causes of an effect which had so 
deep an impression on my mind, led to that series of ex- 
ertions which have occupied ony whole life since that time, 
to better the lot of the laborers. The unprincipled, ma- 
lignant, and brazen villains, who fatten under the wings 
of corruption, have accused me of inconsistency. There 
are the thirty-eight volumes of the Register. Let them 
say whether I have not constantly been laboring, for nine- 
teen years, to eifect such a change as should tend to 
restore the laboring classes to a state of happiness. Let 
those volumes say whether I have been fickle ; whether I 
have changed and chopped about. Let those volumes 
say whether the great and ever prevailing burden of my 
complaints has not been, the ruin, the starvation, the deg- 
radation, of the English laboring classes by the means 
of taxation co-operating with an infernal paper-money 
system. For many reasons have I hated and detested 
the system. I have hated it because it gave a predomin- 
ance to suddenly-acqmred wealth ; because it caused Jews, 
jobbers, loan-mongers, East India adventurers, and all 
sorts of vermin to come and domineer over the people; 
because it destroyed English hospitality ; because it took 
from the people their natural magistrates and put unfeel- 
ing wretches in their stead ; because, to answer its fiscal 
pui-poses, it took away, in numerous cases, the trial by 
jury ; because it hardened all the laws ; because it made 
thousands the victuns of irresistible temptation to imitate 
the base fabric of paper-money ; because it engendered a 
race of spies and informers so abhorrent to the Enghsh 



Ifis Minious '■'■ History of tlie Refonnatlony 253 

heart : for these, and many other reasons, I have detested 
the system; but my great and nevei'-ceasing subject of 
complaint has been that it starved and degraded the labor- 
ing classes of England. 

" To this great sin of the system I have hung like a 
bull-dog ; for the whole nineteen years I have never 
quitted my hold. And at last I see the object of my 
labors about to be accomplished. I have never been act- 
uated by any party motive ; never have felt hostility to 
the Government, as government / never have I desired to 
see, but always have desired not to see, a revolution in 
the bad sense of the word. But I have been, and I am, 
for anything that will restore the laboring classes to that 
happiness which I, in my youth, saw them enjoy, and 
which I enjoyed with them. If the laboring classes be 
to perish, perish, I say, the whole nation ! " 



CHAPTER XI. 

HIS FAMOUS "HISTOKY OF THE REFOKMATION." 

Cobbett's favorite form of addi-ess is the letter; his 
gi'ammars, his histories, his political ai'ticles, ai'e all put 
into this form. He loved to have some individual, some 
representative or mai'ked person, to whom he could speak ; 
the general pubUc was too vague for him. It cannot be 
denied that this form of address has some advantages over 
that of addfessing the pubHc in general : the text for the 
discourse is fui-nislied; the aim or object is dii-ect and 
plain ; the point of view is distinctly marked and limited ; 
the interest is heightened. If a public man made a re- 
markable speech, or did a remaikable deed, Cobbett, 
instead of giving the substance of the speech, or record- 
ing the deed, and commenting on it imj^ersonally, ad- 
dressed a letter to the speaker or doer himself, in which 



254 Life of William Oobbett. 

he singled out whatever he thought praiseworthy or 
blameworthy, and spoke his mind to the party as freely 
and openly as if he had been talking face to face with him ; 
with the advantage of having all the talk on his own side. 
There is, besides, a direct interest for the reader in a com- 
position of this character ; for there is something of the 
nature of a challenge or personal encounter in it. How 
striking and piquant most of those letters are ! No mat- 
ter to whom addressed, or what the object aimed at ; no 
matter how dry or insipid the subject, Cobbett's facile 
pen clothed the person and the subject with interest, and 
lent freshness and flavor to all he touched. 

Cobbett's most famous book, the one of which the most 
copies have been sold, and which has been translated into 
many languages, is also in the form of letters : I refer to 
his History of the Reformation in England, which is ad- 
dressed to "all sensible and just Englishmen.'" Notwith- 
standing its fame and popularity among a certain class, 
this history is, m my opinion, the work that does least 
credit to his hterary reputation, and least honor to his 
knowledge, judgment, and truthfulness. It has been said 
of Cobbett that it was enough for him to get a thorough 
grip of one side of a question ; about the other side he 
did not trouble himself.* This is true, it must be con- 
fessed, with respect to many of his writings ; but in none 
is this peculiarity so strongly marked, so strikingly dis- 
played as in this his so-called History of the Reformation. 
He here shows himself not only one-sided, partisan, and 
narrow in his views ; but virulent and unfair in his asser- 
tions. He is the impassioned advocate of the Cathohcs, 
forgetting everything but his clients, earnestly and ve- 
hemently pleading for them, and moving heaven and earth 
to prove them saints, and theu' opponents devils ; not an 
impartial historian, faithfully recording the facts of his- 

• '■ 1 

* Encyclopedia Britannica ; art. Cobbett. 



His I<\iinoi(fi •' Ilistonj <\f the Reformation.^ 255 

toiy. He goes beyond all proper bounds in his denun- 
ciation of some chaxacters and in his praises of others ; and 
his denunciations are levelled against those who have, by 
neai-ly all other liistorians, been considered worthy of 
esteem, and his praises are of those who have, by nearly 
all other historians, been considered worthy of rej)robation. 
This is chai'acteristic of hun ; for he never went half-way 
in anything, and he always had a strong inclination to 
attack and condemn Avhat all the world praised. His de- 
nmiciations ai"e passionate, sweephig, violent ; there is not 
a particle of goodness or truth in those he condemns, and 
nothing but vii'tue and saintliness in those he praises. 
He could see nothing in all the Reformers but a parcel of 
plunder-lo-sdng scoundi'els, and nothing in all the Romish 
leaders but a body of the most pui'e-minded, philanthropic, 
disinterested, and saintly citizens. In fact, there prob- 
ably never was produced a more one-sided, luimitigatedly 
pai'tial performance than this book of Cobbett's ; nor is 
there any other work containing so many coarse epithets, 
so many bitter, scathing, scorchmg denunciations of men 
and measui'es. He is constantly boiling over with rage 
at the destroyers of monasteries and nunneries, and con- 
demns them with an unsparingness of abuse and vehe- 
mence of language unparalleled by any wiiter, ancient or 
modem. If I should speak in the language of Cobbett 
hunself, I should say that his work was a mean, mer- 
cenai-y, and maHgnant attack upon men of the noblest, 
bravest, and manliest chai'acter, and that it was crammed 
with measui'eless Hes and atrocious calumnies, j^rompted 
by selfish greed and insatiable vanity. 

But this will never do ; I must not speak of it in this 
maimer, for I am not at all sui'e that he had any but laud- 
able motives in writing the book. If we could transport 
ourselves back to his day and generation, we should per- 
haps view the matter a little more leniently. He has 
been accused of selHng himself to the pope; of being in 



256 Life of Williani Cobbett. 

the pay of the Roman Catholics ; of aiming at being re- 
turned to Parliament from Ireland ; and so on ; but this 
is all nonsense, The book was written when Cathohcs in 
England were excluded from almost every pohtical privi- 
lege, deprived of almost every civil right, and when the 
great agitation in their favor was at its height. Cobbett 
sympathized with them, as he did with all who were un- 
fairly dealt with, and he endeavored to help them to their 
rights by showing Protestant Englishmen that Catholics 
had done some very noble things in their time, and were 
not at all such a dangerous class of people as they were 
supposed to be, and as he himself once supposed them to 
be. His aim, therefore, seems to have been to help the Cath- 
olics to their rights by removing the prejudices against 
them from the minds of Englishmen ; and it is probable 
that his work aided in causing the passage of the famous 
Catholic Emancipation Bill, which took place (1829) four 
years after the publication of his book, and which secured 
to Catholics most of the privileges enjoyed by Protestants. 
In the same year that he wrote this work, he wi'ote an 
eloquent paper, entitled "Appeal of the Catholics of Ire- 
land to the People of England," which was signed by Mr. 
O'Gorman, Secretary to the Catholics in Ireland, and 
which was in this shape extensively published in England. 
The aim, therefore, was a noble one ; its effect was a good 
one ; but the spirit of the work was a false one. It can 
not be regarded as anything else than a party pamphlet, 
written in the heat of political discussion. Macaulay's 
History of England has been sarcastically termed a " huge 
Whig pamphlet." Cobbett's History of the Reformation 
may, without any sarcasm at all, be termed a fiercely par- 
tisan popish pamphlet. It is composed in a sjDiiit of in- 
fatuation : the author is possessed with the idea that all 
previous historians are villains and scoundrels, who have 
written for nothing but pay and place, and that he alone 
is capable of taking an honest, fan* view of thmgs : conse- 



His l^iutious ^'■fll story of the Reformation!''' 257 

quently he takes the coutrary of neaily all their assertions 
as neai-est the truth. 

It is a well-knowu fact that the ablest men sometimes 
lose their heads through infatuation at their success. Of 
this, there cannot be a more striking example than that of 
om" own Senator Conlding, who, on being re-elected to 
the Senate of the United States, foolishly resigned his 
seat, "with the expectation that he Avould be immediately 
returned, and thus compel President Garfield to grant 
his MT.shes. Did not success, and overweening pride at 
his success, cause him to lose his head ? Napoleon finally 
came to believe himself invincible, and refused to hsten 
to reason or ai'gument mth reference to his final and fatal 
expedition to Russia. Cobbclt seems to have got into 
something of the same state of mind when he undertook 
this ecclesiastical-historical expedition ; for he would be- 
hove in nothing but his own conceptions on the subject. 

Macaulay — who speaks of reading Cobbett " with pleas- 
lu'e, delight, and abhon-ence"' — supposes that he, like 
Rousseau, was, in his latter days, possessed with the hal- 
lucination that all the world had combined against him, 
in order to falsify the truth and twist everything wrong. 
Cobbett, however, knew what he was about ; there is no 
mistaking his meaning ; there is, unquestionably, " method 
in his madness ;" and his object is perfectly clear. Ac- 
cording to him, all existing things in England are wi'ong ; 
every change that has been made for the last thi'ee hun- 
ch'ed years is for the worse ; the age when Cathohcism 
was supreme was the golden age in England ; the people 
had plenty to eat ; there was no beggary, no pauperism, 
no crime ; the physical and moral condition of the people 
was far- better than after the Reformation. He does not 
maintain that Catholic doctrines are superior to Protestant 
ones; but that the effect of the Catholic ordinances on 
the people, on their physical and moral welfare, was fai* 
superior to that of the Protestant ordinances. 



258 Life of William Cobbett. 

Now, even if this were proved ; even if it were demon- 
strated that the people of England were, in the sixteenth 
century, physically better off than they were in the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century, it would not amount to 
much. The latter was the period immediately following 
the long and exhausting Napoleonic wai's, when the Eng- 
lish people were crushed by enormous taxes on everything 
on the earth, under the earth, and in the heavens above ; 
when almost the very air they breathed was taxed to pay 
the interest on the enormous war debt, incurred by Pitt's 
incapacity ; when, in short, the great mass of the people 
were turned into a race of paupers through the boundless 
stupidity of that statesman and his satellites. The Pro- 
testant Reformation had nothing whatever to do with this 
state of thmgs And as to the material welfare of Pro- 
testants and Cathoh'cs at the present day, it would notZ^a 
difficult to point out, in the same country, prosperous and 
happy Protestant communities in striking contrast with 
poor and wretched Catholic ones : this, in fact, is the rule ; 
the opposite, the exception. But I do not think that the 
pleasing pictm-e of a healthy and happy people which 
Cobbett di-ew, as the residt of his middle-age studies, is 
at all correct; for those who have studied deeper, who 
have made a special study of this age, draw a very differ- 
ent picture. Professor Draper, for instance, in his " Intel- 
lectual Development of Eiurope," shows that, through 
want of knowledge, sanitary and moral; through want 
of drainage and other modern sanitary improvements; 
through shrine-cure practices and others equally absurd ; 
through all these, the misery and suffering, the plagues 
and pestilences, the destitution, disease, and death, 
amongst the masses of the people in the middle ages, 
were enormous ; so great, that it took five hundred years 
for the population to double. ^Vhereas, in modern Pro- 
testant England — but not in modern Catholic France, or 
Spain, or Mexico, or South America — the population 



///.•.' Famous '■^History of the Reformation^ 250 

doubles every fifty years, notwithstanding the enormous 
emigration of her people to all pai'ts of the world. 

Cobbett failed to see any of the long train of circum- 
stances leading to the Reformation ; he failed to see that 
it was not simply lui English but a Eui'opean movement; 
that no rulers ever could have caiiied out and perpetuated 
such a radical sweeping change unless it was supported, 
nay, demanded by the people ; he failed to see any of the 
thousand miseries and sufleriugs endui-ed by the people 
dui-ing the middle-ages ; the deep-seated and constantly- 
increasing dissatisfaction with the priesthood, which 
reached away back to the time of Wickliffe and Chaucer ; 
the huge murderous dead-weight of the inquisition, which 
smothered all free thought and prevented all scientific 
progress; he failed to see the intellectual and spiritual 
deadness resulting from subserviency to one ecclesiastical 
system ; the necessity of intellectual hberty, of the right 
of private judgment, and the impossibility of all Europe 
remaining for ever in one and the same naiTOw cu'cle of 
ideas — in short, he failed to see that the causes of the 
Refoi'mation lay much deeper, and were much longer 
working, than could be accounted for by the mere caprice 
or viciousness of the ruler of the day. 

Cobbett considered the whole matter in England as the 
result of the lust and cupidity of Heniy YIII., and seems 
to think that if that monarch had not existed, or had not 
broken away from the Pope, the Reformation in England 
would never have taken place. Had he done, had he been 
able to do, what Macaulay says an historian must do, in 
order to get a coiTect idea of any age or people ; had he 
soaked his mind with the literature of that period ; had 
he made himself thoroughly acquainted with the original 
documents of that period, he would certainly have come 
to a different conclusion. But Cobbett could not do 
this, if he would : he had no knowledge of the language, 
in which all the documents prior to the Reformation, and 



260 Life of William Cohhett. 

many subsequent to it, are written; lie knew nothing 
of Latin ; so that all the real history of the period was a 
sealed book to him. Nor had he the time to study this 
literature, even if he had acquired a knowledge of the 
language. His eyes were so intensely riveted on the 
then present state of things in England that he could not 
see into the past. In fact, he was in every way un- 
fitted for the task; disposition, character, knowledge, 
leisrure, all of these failed in his case ; his character and 
acquirements were all of the wrong sort for an historian, 
who must be calm, impartial, broadly cultiu^ed, master of 
many languages, capable of the very broadest and most 
tolerant views, possessing the most patient, the most 
untiling, the most wide and deep-searching industry. 
Cobbett was too busy with his various printing, publish- 
ing, and political schemes ; too busy unmasking the plun- 
derers and place-hunters of his own day, to study original 
documents and to go deep into the past; he could not 
possibly find time for such work ; so he made up his mind 
to rrm full tilt against everything Englishmen had believed 
in for centuries, to carry all before him in one fell swooj) ; 
and he dispatched the history of perhaps the most import- 
ant period in the world's annals in sixteen letters, written, 
most likely, in sixteen weeks ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SAND-HILL AS AN EDUCATOK. A PEETTY FAMILY PICTURE. 

One cannot help wondering what manner of man Cob- 
bett would have made had he received a thorough training 
in classical or scientific knowledge. Giant as he was in 
his unaided natural strength, what would he have been, 
had he undergone in youth a first-class mental drUl ! I 
have not a doubt but he would have been a reformer then 



The Sand- Hill as an Educator. 261 

too, and a much wiser one, escaping all those fearful 
blunders he fell into, those raw, unsifted, dogmatic, ontre 
theories of his. He would have seen things from a 
broader, larger point of view, and meastu-ed men and 
their actions with a more liberal gauge than he was accus- 
tomed to do. But vain is all speculation ; universities do 
not always produce the best men ; they do not always tvu^n 
out liberal, cultvu'ed, and useful men ; and Cobbett' might 
indeed have been a much more learned, much more 
finely cultm-ed man than he was, without being half so 
useful, had he received a classical education. An appren- 
ticeship to work, hard unceasing work, is sometimes the 
very best training a young man can receive; for every- 
thing dejiends on the productive chai'acter of the man. 
It is evident that Cobbett himself thought so, too. He 
went, on one occasion, with one of his sons, to see the 
school where he got " the rudiments of his education," 
and he gives this charactexistic account of it : 

" There is a little hop-garden in which I used to work, 
when from eight to ten years old; from which I have 
scores of times run to follow the hounds, leavmg the hoe 
to do the best that it could to destroy the weeds ; but 
the most interesting thing is a sand-hill, which goes from 
a part of the heath down to the rivulet. As a due mixtui-e 
of pleasure with toil, I with two brothers used occasion- 
ally to disport ourselves, as the lawyers call it, at this 
sand-hill. Oui* diversion was this: we used to go to the 
top of the hill, wliich was steeper than the roof of a 
house ; one used to di'aw his arms out of the sleeves of 
liis smock-frock, and lay himself down with liis arms by 
his sides ; and then the others, one at head and the other 
at feet, sent him rolling down the hill, like a barrel or a 
log of wood. By the time he got to the bottom, his hau-, 
eyes, ears, nose and mouth were all full of this loose sand; 
then the others took their tiuii ; and at every roll, there 
was a monsti'ous peal of laughter. 



262 Life of William Cohhett. 

"I liad often told my sons of this while they were very 
little, and I now took one of them to see the spot. But 
that was not all. This was the spot where I was receiv- 
ing my education; and this was the sort of education; 
and I am perfectly satisfied that if I had not received 
such an education, or something very much like it ; that, 
if I had been brought up a milksop with a nursery-maid 
everlastingly at my heels, I should have been at this day 
as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those 
frivolous idiots that are tm-ned out from Winchester or 
"Westminster school, or from any of those dens of dunces 
called colleges and universities. It is impossible to say 
how much I owe to that sand-hUl ; and I went to retm-n 
it my thanks for the ability which it jDrobably gave me to 
be one of the greatest terrors, to one of the greatest and 
most powerful bodies of knaves and fools, that ever was 
permitted to afflict this or any other country." 

He endeavored to give the same muscular education to 
his children, not one of whom did he ever in his hfe, he 
says, order to look into a book. Not that he did not 
value book-knowledge, but he taught them in a manner 
pecuhar to himself. What a contrast the home of his 
children presented to that of some of the childi'en in 
Dickens's stories ! He is speaking, in his Advice, of the 
taste for the pleasures of the field and the garden, which 
he had implanted in them : " Luckily these things were 
treated of in hooks and pictures of endless variety; so 
that, on wet days, in long evenings, these came into play. 
A large, strong table, in the middle of the room, their 
mother sitting at her work, used to be surrounded with 
them; the baby, if big enough, being set up in a high 
chau'. Here were inkstands, pens, pencils, india-rubber, 
and paper, all in abundance, and every one scrabbled 
about as he or she pleased. There were prints of animals 
of all sorts ; books treating of them ; others treating of 
gardening, of flowers, of husbandly, of hmiting, coursing. 



ISelf- esteem. 2G3 

shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of everything in 
regard to wliich we had something to do. One would be 
trjdng to imitate a bit of my writing ; another di'awing 
the pictvu'es of some of our dogs or horses ; a thu'd poking 
over Be\sdck's ' Quadi'upeds,' and picking out what he 
said about them ; but our book of never-failing resovu'ce 
was the French 31aison Hustique, or ' Farmliouse,' which, 
it is said, is the book that first tempted Duquesnois (I 
think that was the name), the famous physician, in the 
reign of Louis XIV., to learn to read. . . . Wliat need 
had we of schools? What need of teachers ? What need 
of scoldhig and force, to induce children to read, ^vi'ite, 
and love books? What need of cards, dice, or of any 
games to ' kill time,' which, in fact, implant in the infant 
heai't the love of gaming, one of the most destructive of 
all human vices? We did not want to kill time ; .we were 
always busy, wet weather or diy weather, winter or sum- 
mer. There was no force in any case, no command, no 
authority ; none of these was ever wanted." Cobbett 
had the true idea of successful teaching : he created an 
interest in things, and thus caused his scholars to learn 
by themselves. He applied the Pestalozzian method, 
without ever, perhaps, having heai'd of Pestalozzi. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SELF-ESTEEM. COBBETt's OPINION OF HIMSELF. 

If a phrenologist had examined Cobbett's cranium, he 
would surely have found the bump of self-esteem enor- 
mously large. Probably no man in England had a better 
opinion of himself or more confidence in his own abihties 
than Cobbett. This was one of the causes of his success ; 
for it is not sufficient to have ability, one must have con- 
Jidence in one's abihty, in order to succeed. The man of 



264 Life of William Cobbett. 

ability without confidence is generally a failure : a weak- 
ling who is pushed aside by rougher and bolder natures : 
for he never gets into his right place, because he has not 
the confidence or assurance to take it. Faint heart never 
won fair lady or fair fortune. I have often regretted that 
Butler, for instance, the author of Hudibras, should have 
carried this diffidence so far as to allow every undeserving 
brassy rascal to step in before him, and carry off a portion 
of the rewards and emoluments which Charles II. show- 
ered upon worthless and undeserving favorites, to the 
neglect of those who had sacrificed their Hves and for- 
tunes in bringing about the Eestoration. Butler, who 
had done more to this end than any or all of them put 
together, stayed over-modestly behind, and remained 
unnoticed and neglected, until he finally died in poverty 
and wretchedness. 

Cobbett, like Swift, compared his powers with those of 
the men about him ; and, like him, felt that he was supe- 
rior to most of them. "While Swift was serving Sir Wil- 
liam Temple as a kind of underling or dependent secretary, 
he had occasion to see and hear some of the great officers 
of state, including the king himself, at the house of his 
patron; and on these occasions he did not fail to take 
their measure and compare his own powers with theirs. 
It was here that he first saw that he was capable of great 
things. This, to me, is an exceedingly interesting episode 
in his life; and I cannot help picturing in imagination 
the despised and neglected secretary watching the great 
men in their high talk and proud bearing, and noting 
their want of capacity and vain pretension ; I cannot help 
recollecting that wliile nothing but their names remains, 
and that their bodies lie mouldering in forgotten graves. 
Swift and his writings are as familiar as household words, 
and studied by millions ! Cobbett, I imagine, looked upon 
the officers in the army with pretty much the same feelings 
that Swift regarded the great politicians at the house of 



Self- esteem. 265 

Sir "William ; or witli which BuriiH regarded some of the 
great personages whom he met at Edinburgh. Most men 
of great abilities do the same thing; that is, discover 
their abilities by comparison with those of others. But, 
imlike Cobbett, most of them keep these discoveries to 
themselves; they do not ventvu'e to declai-e their supe- 
rioiity, or prefer their claims to recognition ; and very fre- 
quently neither theii- abilities nor theu' claims are thscov- 
ered or recognized until they are under the sod. 

Such retu-ing modesty forms no pai't of Cobbett's chai'- 
acter. He never scruples to proclain openly that he has 
greater talents than other public men of his time. He 
openly declares, and not without reason, that "he is the 
great enhghtener of the people of England ;" and in his 
Letter to Lord Brougham, of July, 1822, he makes this 
amusing, ingenuous declaration: "J^ow let me tell you 
fi'ankly that the very first thing that seriously aroused 
my indignation [against the AVhigs], after my retui'n to 
England the first time, Avas seeing 3'ou and Horner put 
into ParHanient ; while I felt, without any reasoning about 
the matter, that you were both, as politicians, compai-ed 
with me, what a seed is compared Avith an oak." And in 
an advertisement of his own works, he says: ""WQien I 
am asked what books a young man or a young woman 
should read, I always answer. Let him or her read all the 
works I have written. This does," he continues, "it will 
doubtless be said, smell of the shop. No matter. It is 
what I recommend, and experience has taught me that it 
is my duty to give the recommendation." Is there any 
other author, of any nationality whatever, who has spoken 
of his own wi-i tings in such a manner ? Is there any other 
•\ATiiter who has so openly declared his own good opinion 
of himself and his works'? There is no concealment, no 
keeping back of anything, with Cobbett; his advice is 
bold, uni-eserved, open, sincere ; it is undoubtedly good ; 
and perhaps, if the tioith were known, many another liter- 
12 



266 Life of William Gobhett. 

ary man woiild like to give similar advice ; and would do 
so if he were not afraid of being laughed at for his pains. 
Had Cobbett written a work which he had projected 
shortly before his death — "A History of my own Life, 
showing the progress of a ploughboy to a seat in ParHa- 
ment," — ^he would no doubt have surpassed all his previous 
efforts in this direction. What other writer would dare 
to use such a simile as the following? "And if this [the 
enlightenment of the people] be really the object of the 
promoters of these plans, what praise is not due from 
them to me, who am endeavoring to commimicate to the 
people at large all that I have acquired from a life of 
appUcation and experience; who am, in short, endeavor, 
ing to take one head, full of useful knowledge, and to 
clap it safe and sound upon every pair of shoulders in 
the kingdom / " * 

Here is a passage which, written shortly before his 
death, has something pathetic as well as egotistic in it; 
it is the pictiire of a scene that sticks to you in spite 
of youi'self ; something which, once read, is never forgot- 
ten: "I have been lecturing on poHtics — I have been 
maintaining my Manchester propositions in every great 
town in the north, . . . and I have everywhere main- 
tained that, unless those propositions be acted upon to 
the full extent, a reform of the Parliament will be a delu- 
sion and a mockery. Everywhere I have been received 
with marks of approbation. . . . During my last tour, 
scores — and I might say, many hundreds of young men, 
sometimes twenty at a time, have crowded round me as I 
have been going out of the lecturing places ; one saying, 
as he shook my hand, ' That is the hand that wrote the 
Grammar ;' another, ' That is the hand that wrote the 
Protestant Reformation;' another, 'That is the hand 
that wrote the Advice to Young Men.' This was the 

* Letter to Earl Grosvenor. 



/Self- esteem. 267 

case, more or less, at every place where I was. . . . 
Nor was this confined to the buoyant spiiits of Lancashu'e 
and Yorkshu'e, where the heart seems always upon the 
lips ; but I found it the same everywhere." 

But I diu'e not make any more quotations of this natui'e, 
for I am afraid of creating a false impression. IMi-. Wat- 
son collects a number of his most striking egotisms to- 
gether, and then says, " Svich are the flowers of boastful- 
ness that may be plucked from various pages of his writ- 
ings." Nothing is more apt to give a wrong impression 
of Cobbett than this. Expressions which, taken singly 
and alone, appesu' niiuvellously presumptuous and boast- 
ful, are, in connection with the matters with which they 
stand, simjily effective and pleasing illustrations of his 
argument, quite in keeping with his general manner, and 
adding force and piqiiancy to his observations. Besides, 
Cobbett had actually done so much with his OAvn single 
hand, that he had acquired the right of speaking of him- 
self as he did, and of illustrating his subject by examples 
drawn from his own life. " I have never known a man 
who was worth much," says Mr. Cougdon, in his Reminis- 
cences of a Journalist, " or had done anything of import- 
ance, who was not apt to overwork the personal pronoun. 
Oui" own experiences, thoughts, adventui-es, failures, and 
successes aie naturally uppermost in our heads and most 
frequently upon our tongues ; and a literaiy man who has 
not become accustomed to that ' infirmity of noble minds ' 
must have had but a small cu'cle of Hterary friends indeed." 



268 Life of William Cobhett. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

HIS FACULTY OF NICK-NAMING. PECULIARITIES AND ECCEN- 

ITIES. CONCLUSION. 

CoBBETT praised and condemned with equal freedom 
most of the pubhc men of his time ; when they acted as 
he wished them to act, they were wise, honest, and hu- 
mane; when the contrary, they were cruel, corrupt, and 
hypocritical. "When he chose to revile," says Mr. Wat- 
son, " one faculty he exerted with great success, — that of 
nicknaming the objects of his vituperation. ' Old Sir 
Glory' was his well-applied ridicule of Burdett's title 
'Westminster's Pride and England's Glory.' Frederick 
Robinson, afterwards Lord Goderich, was happily called 
'Prosperity Fred,' for his constant promises of good times 
coming. Egerton Smith, editor of the Liverpool Mer- 
cury was ludicrously turned into 'Bott Smith,' for the 
rest of his life, on account of something he had said in 
allusion to that disease (sic). Mr. Thomas Attwood, from 
some scheme for reducing the national debt by shilUngs, 
was dubbed ' Little Shilling Attwood.' Lord Ersldne was 
' Baron Clackmannan ' (his second title). Lord Liverpool 
was 'Lord Pinknose Liverpool.' Mr. Hobhouse was 
' Sancho Hobhouse.' Henry Hunt, for a time, was ' the 
great liar of the South,' and Baines ' the great har of the 
North.' IVIr. Black, of the Chronicle, was tui'ned into 
'Doctor Black.' The loquacious Brougham was stig- 
matized as 'a mixture of laudanum and brandy with a 
double allowance of jaw.' The Times was sometimes 
called 'the bloody old Thnes^ and sometimes 'Annie 
Brodie,' from one of the shareholders in the paper. An- 
other of his aversions was ' that lump of horse-dung that 
is called the Globe.'' ^'' Sir Robert Peel was "Spinning 
Jenny Peel." Canning was "Aeolus Canning" — a title 



Tfis FacuUy of Mck-Naminf/. 209 

tliat is said to have provoked inextinguishable laughter 
among high and low — and tbe Quakers were " the unbap- 
tized, buttonless blackguards.'' 

Cobbett's power lay wholly in the man himself, in his 
natm-al abilities and force of chai'acter; he owed very 
little to his education, which Avas remarkably Imiited for 
a man of such influence. He would have gained a promi- 
nent position in almost any station of Ufe ; for he was 
bound to lead, and never could bear to be led by anybody 
or in anything. As his range of view was hmited, so 
were his aims and objects, which were not of the highest 
or most intellectual chai'acter. The standard by which 
he measiu-ed everything was usefulness / and the only 
valuable things to him were those which produced ma- 
terial or mental improvement, especially the former. As 
has been said of somebody else, his idea of civilization 
was sufficient beef, beer, and pudthng, shelter and wages ; 
and provided these were attauied, he had little regard for 
anything else. We have seen with what satisfaction he 
spoke of 'Mr. Chamberlayne's workmen being able "to 
retii'e to a warm bed, after taking a full meal and spend- 
ing a cheerful evening by the side of their own fire.'' To 
cause all his countrymen to do this was his ideal of hap- 
piness. And a much nobler and more generous one it is 
than that of those who wish to fill their nmids with bib- 
heal and sphitual knowledge while theh- bellies are empty 
and theii' homes aie di'eai'y. "VVlien Lord Brougham said 
he hoped the time would come when every man in Eng- 
land would read Bacon, Cobbett said he would bo content 
if a time would come when every man in England could 
eat bacon. He wovdd have fully appreciated Carlyle's 
saying of the United States, as expressed to one of his 
iVmerican visitors, " The best thing I know of yoiu' coun- 
try is that a man can get beef to eat there." Cobbett saw 
no use in j)06try or romance; he had no relish for the 
higher or poetic flights in literatm-e and ait ; the works 



270 TJfe, of William fjohhett. 

of Shakespeare and Walter Scott, for instance, were en- 
tirely superfluous, and the reading of such things a waste 
of time. 

He says that he never once went a-walking with his 
wife ; that is, he never went out with his wife simply for 
the sake of walking: he always had some object ahead 
when he rode or walked with her or with any one else. 
This single fact is a sample of his whole activity: his 
whole career, every act of his whole career, was to attain 
some useful end; he never spent a moment or wrote a 
line to promote simply the agreeable or the beautiful; 
whatever there is agreeable or beautiful in his writings is 
incidental, not intentional ; for all his efforts were singly 
to ftu'ther the materially useful, to promote the physical 
well-being and comfort of his countrymen. To secm-e 
better food, better clothing, better lodging, and greater 
political freedom for the people of England — the latter in 
order to secure the former — these were his great objects ; 
and because in the olden times food was cheaper and land 
more generally owned by the common people than at 
the present day, he could, though himself a Protestant 
and a steady adherent of the Church of England, see no 
good in the Protestant Reformation, which he considered 
the cause of the misery and destitution of the working 
classes in his own day. 

Cobbett was a man of strong prejudices, strong likiags, 
and dislikings, and accustomed to a strong way of express- 
ing them. He detested the Jews because they were usu- 
rers and supporters of tyrants ; he was jealous of Scotch- 
men because of their persistent, pushing industry and 
superior intelligence ; he hated the Edinbm-gh reviewers 
and the historian Hume, because they were Tories ; he 
called the reviewers "shuffling sots" and Hume "a mean, 
mercenary, and malignant liar ;" he despised Wilberf orce 
and the anti-slavery people in England because they 
thought more of the black slaves in Jamaica than of the 



/y/.s- Fii('\ilt)i of X'n'h- Naming. 271 

Avliite slaves iu England ; be rightly condemned Napoleon, 
for his choice in his second niairiage, declaring that he 
ought to have assembled a score of the prettiest girls iu 
France, and chosen one of them for a wife; he had a 
strong aversion to potatoes and tea and coffee, calling the 
former the "infamous potato," and the latter "slops;" 
and prophetically dechui-ed that any people that Hved on 
potatoes would be sui'e, some day, to be the victims of 
famine ; he would have every body eat mutton or bacon 
and di'ink ale, even for breakfast ; he hated the practice of 
vaccination, calling it "the beastly cow-pox business," 
and caused all his childi-en to be innoculated while at the 
breast ; he believed in hunting, boxing, bull-baiting, and 
the game of single-stick, and offered prizes for the best 
players ; he condemned the wearing of gloves by men as a 
vain, fooHsh custom ; he despised the public schools of 
England, calling them "haunts of dullards and dens of 
drones;" he disapproved of teaching the peasantry to 
read, because the press was so corrupt they could obtain 
only false information by reading ; and he gave no school- 
ing to his own childi"en till they were well advanced in 
boyhood or girlhood, and then led them on to a love of 
leai'ning by spreading books and pictiu'es before them. 

His faults and peculiaiities, like his merits and excel- 
lences, are striking and uncommon ; but his merits are so 
gi'eat that we can well afford to look over his faults. " It 
is not by his faults," says IVIi*. Lewes, "but by his excel- 
lences, that we judge a great man." In many things his 
example is worthy of imitation, for his hfe presents much 
more that is deserving of approbation than of condemna- 
tion. Aud as to his wi-itings, if any man wishes to learn 
how to MTite strong, idiomatic, correct Enghsh ; to reason 
cogently and convincingly ; to make a clear statement of 
a case, stripped of all that is superfluous ; to overcome an 
opponent by strong arguments, strongly stated ; to silence 
an enemy by radiant exposure of his fallacies, and s^vift 



272 Life of William Cobbett. 

detection of his inconsistencies, covering him with confu- 
sion and ridicule, or naihng him for hfe to the pubhc pil- 
lory by an epithet ; if any man wants to become acquainted 
with that style of attack which inspires enemies with ter- 
ror and friends with enthusiasm ; in which no favors are 
asked and no quarter is given; in which the writer is 
bound to win, at all hazards, like Nelson in his battles ; — 
if any man wishes to become familiar with a writer who 
combines, with all these, rare powers of description and 
narration, and a fascmating attractiveness of manner that 
holds spell-bound all who once begin to read his writings, 
let him turn to the pages of the Political Register, or to 
any of the forty other works by the same author, and he 
will be abundantly satisfied. 



List of William Cohhett^s Publications. 273 



IJsl of llliaiii Colilielt' 



FROM EDWARD SMITH'S BIOGRAPHY. 



1. The Soldter'a Friend , or considerations on the late pretended au^ 
mentation of the subsistence of the private soldiers. "Laws grind the 
poor, and rich men rule the laws."— Goldsmith. Written by a Subaltern. 
London . Ridgway. 1703, 8vo. %cL; reprinted in 1793, without printer's or pub- 
lisher's name Price id., or 100 copies 10«'. Gcif., pp. 1.5. [This tractis evident- 
ly the work of more than one hand. The style is that of Cobbett ; but some 
of the subject-matter comes from a person well acquainted with the politi- 
cal intrigues of the day.] 

2. [TranMation J] The Laws op Nations: being the science of national 
law. covenants, power, etc., founded upon the treaties and customs of 
modern nations in Europe. By G. F, von Martens, Professor of Public Law 
in the University of Gottingen. Translated from the French, by William 
Cobbett. To which is added, a list of the principal treaties, declarations, 
and other public papi-rs, from the year 1731 to 1738, by the author. Phila- 
delphia, 1794 London edition, 1802, dedicated to John Penn, Fsq. Fourth 
edition, London, 1809, with the treaties, &c., continued by the translator 
down to Nov. 1815, 8vo, pp. xxxii. — 16S. 

3 Le Tuteur An(;i.\is, ou Grammaire n'guliere de la langue anglaise, en 
deu.x pnrties. Par Willium Cobbett. A Philadelphie : chez Thomas Brad- 
ford, ]79.'5 8vo, pp. X.— :^40 [This book has been reproduced many times in 
France and Beleium, under the title of "Maitre d'A7i'.rlais," and has much 
increased in bulk from time to time. It is still held, in those countries, to 
be superior to any other book of its kind.] 

4. [Translation} A topographical and political description of the Spanish 
port of Saint Domingo, containing general observations on the climate, 
population, and productions ; on the character and manners of the inhabit- 
ants ; with an account of the several branches of the government. By 
M[ederio L[ouis] E(lie] Moreau-de-SaintMcry, Member of the Philosophical 
Society of Philadelphia, &c. Translated from the French by William 
Cobbett Philadelphia : printed and sold by the Author, Printer and Book- 
seller. No. 84 South Front Street, 179ti. Z vols. 8vo. 

5. [Appendix only] The History op Jacobinism. ... By William 
Playiair. With an Appendix by Peter Porcupine, showing the ciose con- 
nection which has ever subsisted between the Jacobins at Paris and the 
Democrats la the United States of America. Philadelphia, 179(5. 2 vols. 8vo. 

6. Observations on Priestley's EMioitATioN. to which is added, A Story 
OP A Farmer's Bull. [Anonymovt^.} Philadelphia, 1794. pp.88. 

7 A Bone TO Gnaw FOR THE Democrats. By Peter Porcupine. Philadel- 
phia, Jan. 1795. pp. vi.— 66. 

8. A Kick tor a Bite. By Peter Porcupine. Philadelphia, Feb. 1795. 

9. A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats. Part 2. By Peter Porcupine. 
Philadelphia, Mar 1795, pp. vii.— G6. 

Sect. 1. Observations on a patriotic pamphlet, entitled "Proceedings of 
the United Irishmen." Sect. 2. Democratic principles illustrated by exam- 
ple. Sect. 3. Democratic memoirs; or an account of some recent feats 
performed by the Frenchified citizens of the United States of America. 

12* 



274 List of William CohheWs Publications. i 

[London edition of [7] and [9] printed for J. "Wright, opposite Old Bond 
Street, Piccadilly 1797 ; A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats. By Peter Por- 
cupine, Author of the Bloody Buoy, &c., &c. To which is prefixed A Rod 
for the Backs of the Critics ; containing an historical sketch of the present 
state of political criticism in Great Britain ; as exemplified in the conduct 
of the monthly, Critical and Analytical Reviews, &o., &c. Interspersed 
with Anecdotes. By Humphrey Hedgehog, 12mo. pp. xcv.— 175.] 

10. A Little Plain English ; addressed to the people of t^je United 
States, on the Treaty, and on the conduct of the President relative thereto, 
in answer to " The Letters of Franklin." By Peter Porcupine. Philadel- 
phia, Aug. 1795. pp. viii.— 103. 

11. A Nb-w Teak's Gift to the Democrats ; or observations on a pam- 
phlet entitled, " A Vindication of Mr. Randolph'^ Resignation." Philadel- 
phia, Jan. 1796. pp. 71. 

13. The Censor, No. 1 ; or a Review of Political Occurrences relative to 
the United States of America. Philadelphia, Jan. 1796. [This number of 
the ' Censor ' was originaliy called ' The Prospect from the Congress Gallery,' 
and as such it has been sometimes referred to."— iVote in collected works.'] 

13. The Bloodt Buot, thrown out as a Warning to the Political Pilots of 
all Nations ; or, a faithful relation of a multitude of acts of horrid barbarity, 
such as the eye never witnessed, the tongue expressed, or the imagination 
conceived, until the commencement of the French Revolution. To which 
is added, an instructive Essay, tracing these dreadful efl'ects to their real 
causes. Philadelphia. 1796. [Among reprints in England, there is one at 
Cambridge, entitled, " Annals of Blood ; or an Authentic Relation," &c.] 

14. The Censor, No. 2. Philadelphia, March, 1796. 

15. The Censor, No. 3. Philadelphia, April, 1796. 

16. The Censor, No. 4. Philadelphia, May, 1796. 

17. The Scare-Crow ; being an infamous letter sent to Mr. John Oldden, 
threatening destruction to his house, and violence to the person of his 
tenant, William Cobbett. With remarks on the same. Philadelphia. 

' From the Free Press of William Cobbett, July 22, 1796." 

18. The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, with a full and fair 
account of all his' authoring transactions ; being a sure and infallible guide 
for all enterprising young men who wish to make a fortune by writing 
pamphlets.—" Now, you lying varlets, you shall see how a plain tale will put 
you down."— Shakespeare. Philadelphia, Aug. 1796. 

19. The Censor, No. 5. Philadelphia, Sept. 1796. [Contents : Life of 
Thomas Paine, interspersed with remarks and reflections. Remarks on the 
pamphlets lately published against Peter Porcupine.] 

20. The Gros Mousqueton Diplomatique ; or diplomatic blunderbuss. 
Containing Citizen Adet's notes to the Secretary of State ; as also his 
cockade proclamation, with a preface. Philadelphia, Oct. 1796. [A com- 
pilation, with short preface, to pave the way for the next Censor.] 

21. The Censor. No. 6. Philadelphia, Nov. 1796. [Remarks on the Blun- 
derbuss.] 

23. The Censor, No. 7. Philadelphia, Dec. 1796. [Contents : — Remarks on 
the debates in Congress.— A letter to the infamous Tom Paine, in answer 
to his letter to General Washington.] 

23. The Censor, No. 8. Philadelphia, Jan. 1797. 

34. Porcupine's Gazette ; daily newspaper. Philadelphia, Mar. 4, 1797— 
Dec. 1799. A farewell number was issued to the subscribers, from New 
York, in Jan. 1800. 

35. The Republican Judge ; or the American liberty of the press, as ex- 
hibited, explained, and exposed, in the base and partial prosecution of 
William Cobbett, for a pretended libel against the King of Spain and his 
ambassador, before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. With an Address 
to the people of England. Philadelph a, Nov. 1797. 

26. Detection of a Conspiract formed by the United Irishmen, with 
the evident intention of aiding the tyrants of France in subverting the 
Government of the ITnitgd^tates of America. Philadelphia, May, 1798. 

27. [Abridgment.] The Cannibal's' Progress ; or the dreadful horrors of 
French invasion, as displayed by the Republican officers and soldiers, in. 



JJtit of William CohbeWs Puhlications. 275 

their perfidy, rapacity, ferociousness and brutality, exercised towards the 
Innocent Inhabitants of "Sermany. Abridged from the translation of 
Anthony Aufrere, Esq. r-hiladelphia, June, 1798. [Introductory Address, 
by the Editor.] 

58. REMARKS ON THK Expi..\NATioN. lately published by Dr. Priestley, re- 
spectins: the intercepted letters of his friend and disciple, John 11. Stone. 
To which is added, a Certificate of Civism for Joseph Priestley, Jun. By 
Peter Porcupine. Philadelphia, 1799. 8vo, pp. 52. 

29. The Trial op Repitblicanism ; or a series of political papers, pro\inK 
the injurious and debasinp consequences of Repuolican Government, and 
written constitutions. With an introductory address to the Hon. Thomas 
Erskine, Esq. Philadelphia, June, 1T99. 

30. A Concise and CoMrREUENsivE Histort of Prince Suworow's Cam- 
paign IN Italt, in tue Year 1709. Philadelphia, Jan. 1800. 

.11. The RusHLionT ; by the help of which wayward and disaffected Bri- 
tons mav see a complete specimen of the baseness, dishonesty, ingratitude, 
and perfidy of Republicans, and of the profligacy, injustice and tjTanny of 
Republican Governments. By Peter Porcupine. Five numbers. New 
York, Feb.— April, 1800. pp. 258. 

The RusHMGHT, No. 6. London and New York, Aug., 1800. pp. .51. [An 
Address to the People of England. To the People of the United States of 
America.] 

32. The Porcupine ; daily newspaper. London, Oct. 30, 1800. . . (?) Nov. 
1801. 

33. Porcupine's Works ; containing various writings and selections, ex- 
hibiting a faithful picture of the United States of America ; of their 
governments, laws, politics and resources ; of the characters of their pres- 
idents, governors, legislators, magistrates and military men ; and or the 
customs, manners, morals, religion; virtues and vices of the people ; com- 
prising also a complete series of historical documents and remarks, from 
the end of the war, in 1783, to the election ot the president, in March, 1801. 
By William Cobbett. In twelve volumes. London, 1801. 8vo. 

[The contents of the first eleven volumes include those of the above- 
enumerated publications under articles 6—31, with the addition of com- 
plementary matter :— A summary view of the politics of the United States 
from the close of the war to the year 1794. Account of the insurrection in 
the western counties of Pennsylvania, in 1794. A summary of the proceed- 
ings in Conjrress, during the session which commenced on the 4th of No- 
Rember, 1794. I*roceedings relative to the British treaty. An analysis of 
vandolph's Vindication. Miscellaneous StatePapers [French depredations ; 
Washington's retirement ; impeachment of Wm. BUnmt, ifcc] Miscellaneous 
Anecdotes. Selections from Pormpine's Gazette. The twelfth volume con- 
tains a series of historical documents and remarks, from Dec. 1799 to 
March, 1801 ; some of which are extracted from the London Porcupine^\ 

34. A Collection of Facts and Observations, relative to the Peace 
WITH Bonaparte, chiefly extracted from the Pormpine, and including Mr, 
Cohbett's letters to Lord Hawkesbury. To which is added, an appendix, 
containing the divers conventions, treaties, state papers, and despatches 
connected with the subject ; together with extracts from the speeches of 
Mr Pitt, Mr. Fox and Lord Hawkesburv, respecting Bonaparte and a peace 
with France. By William Cobbett. Loudon, Nov. 2, 1801. 8vo. pp. 231— Ixiii. 

•35. Letters to the Right Honourable Henry Addington, Chancellor of 
His Majesty's Exchequer, on the fatal effects of the peace with Bonaparte, 
particularly with respect to the colonies, the commerce, the manufactures, 
and the constitution of the United Kingdom. By William Cobbett. Lon- 
don, January, 1802. 8vo. 

[These two articles [.'M. 35] were reproduced, in part, under the following 
title : " Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Hawkesbury, and to the Right 
Honourable Henry Addington, on the peace with Bonaparte, to which is 
added an appendix, containing a collection (now greatly enlarged* of all 
conventions, treaties, speeches and other documents connected with the 
subject. By William Cobbett. Second Edition. London, January, 1802.] 

36 Cohbett's Weekly Political Register. London, January, 1803 —June 
IW.I. [Fortnightly in Jan. 1803, afterwards weekly, except April 12 to July 
.5, 1(517 ; Mar 21, May 2, June 27, Aug. 15, Oct. 17, 24, 31, Nov. 7, 14, 1818; Aug. 
21, Oct. 16, Nov. 20, 27, 1819 ; Feb. 26, Mar. 4, 11, 18, 1880-all of which were 



276 List of William Cobhett^a Publications. 

missed. Price 10<?., occasionally Is., until Oct. 1816, thence Zd. till Jan. 6, 
1820 (July to October, 1816, reprinted in cheap form) ; M. from Jan. 1.^, 1820 
to Dec. 1837; td. from Jan. 1828; Is. from Oct. 30, 1830; Is. 2c?. from Jan. 8, 
1831.] 

The first four vols. CobbeWs Annual Eegister on title) published with sup- 
plements of state papers, &c. CobbeWs Weekly Political Pamphlet, on and 
after Feb. 15, 1817 ; again called CobbeWs Weekly Political Pegister in the fol- 
lowing year. CobbetVs Weekly Register in April, 1821. CobbetVs Weekly Politi- 
cal Register, during and after 1828. Many articles were reprinted from the 
Register, and published separately. The most important were : Rueal 
Rides in the counties of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Glou- 
cestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somersetshire, Oxfordshire, 
Berkshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Hertfordshire; with economical 
and political observation relative to matters applicable to, and illustrated 
by the state of those counties respectively. London, 1830. 12mo. pp. 668. 
Cobbett's Tour in Scotland, and in the four northern counties of England: 
in the autumn of the year, 1832. London, 1833. 12mo. pp. 264. [The Regis- 
ter was continued, at intervals, after Cobbett's death. It appeared as late 
as September, 1836.] 

37. {Translation.'] The Empire of Germany divided into departments, 

under the prefecture of the Elector of . To which is prefixed, a memoir 

on the political and military state of the continent, written by the same 
author. Translated from the French by William Cobbett. Preface by the 
translator. London, Jan. 1803. [Also printed in the Supplement to vol. 2 
of the Register.'] 

38. Cobbett's Paeliamentart Debates. Lonaon, Dec, 1803, &c. [In the 
year 1812 this work passed into the hands of Mr. T. C. Hansard, and new 
titles were given to all volumes from the commencement issued after that 
date : — " The Parliamentary Debates from the year 1803 to the present time; 
forming a continuation of the work entitled, ' The Parliamentary History 
of England from the earliest period to the present time.' " An advertise- 
ment, inserted in reprints, of the first volume, explained the alteration to 
the public : — " London, Oct., 1812. Mr Cobbett having disposed of his in- 
terest in this work, it is now continued under the general title of ' The Par- 
liamentary Debates ; ' " and proceeded to state that the general conduct of 
the work was not in any respect alf ected by the alteration ] 

39. The Political Proteus. A view of the public character and conduct 
of R. B. Sheridan, Esq., as exhibited in, I.° Ten letters to him ; II. Selections 
from his parliamentary speeches from the commencement of the French 
Revolution ; III. Selections from his speeches at the Whis club, and at other 
public meetings. By William Cobbett. London, Jan. 1804. 8yo. pp. 388. 
[The letters had previously appeared in the Register.'] 

40. [Compilation.'] Cobbett's Spirit of the Public Journals for the year 
1804. London, Jan. 1805. pp. xx. — 1219. ("Letters, Essays, &c., taken from 
the English, American, and French journals for the year 1804, the subjects 
being all of that nature which render them interesting to the politician."] 

41. Cobbett's Parliamentary Histort of England, from the Norman 
Conquest, in 1066, to the year 1803, from which last-mentioned epoch it is 
continued downwards in the work entitled, " Cobbett's Parliamentary De- 
bates." London, Oct. 1806. [The tenth and succeeding volumes are called. 
" The Parliamentary History of England."] 

42. Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for 
High Treason and other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period 
to the Present Time. London, 1809, &c. [After the tenth volume, when 
Cobbett's interest in the publication had been transferred, the title ran :— 
" A complete collection .... to the present time. With notes and other 
illustrations. Compiled by T.B.Howell, Esq., F.R.S.,F. S. A." Vols. XXII.— 
XXXIII. :— " .... and continued from the year 1783 to the present time. 
By Thomas Jones Howell, Esq." Vol. XXXIV :— " General index to . 

By David Jardine, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-law."] 

43. [Preface, &c.] An Essay on Sheep, intended chiefly to promote the 
introduction and propagation of merinos in the United States of America 
.... By. R. R. Livingston. Printed by order of the Legislature of the 
State of New York. London, reprinted : with a preface and explanatory 
notes by William Cobbett. 1811. 

44. Paper against Gold, and Qloi^t against Prosperity, Or, an account 



List of William CohheWs Publications. 'Ill 

of the rise, progress, extent, and present state of the funds and of the 
paper-mouey of Ureat Uritain : and also of the situation of that country 
as to its debt and other expenses ; its navifjatioii, commerce, and manufac- 
tures; its taxes, population and paupers; drawn from authentic docu- 
ments, and brouL'ht down to the end of the year 1814. la two volumes. 
Uy William C'obbott. London, 181.'). pp. viii.— 523, and iv.— 100— cxxvii. 
[The title slightly altered, in a later issue, with an Introduction, dated 
1817 :— 

Paper against Gold ; or the History and Mystery of the Bank of England; 
of tlie Debt, of the Stocks, of the Sinkins Fund, and of all the other tricks 
and contrivances, carried on by the means of Paper Money. 8vo. Columns 
viii. — 470;andiamo. pp. xviii.— 332. " A Preliminary part of Paper against 
Gold," consisting of essays written between 1803 and 180G, was published in 
1821.] 

45. A Tear's Eesidence in the United States op America. Treating of 
the face of the country, the climate, the soil, the products, the mode of 
cultivating the land, the prices of lands, of labour, of food, of raiment ; 
of the expenses of housekeeping, and of the usual manner of living ; of the 
manners and customs of the people ; and of the institutions of the country, 
civil, political and religious. In three parts. By William Cobbett; Lon- 
don, 1818. 8vo. pp. Viii.— CIO ; also 13mo, pp. 370. 

46. A Grammar of the Enulisu Language, in a series of letters. In- 
tended for the use of schools and of young persons in general : but, more 
especially for the use of soldiers, sailors, apprentices and plough-boys. By 
William Cobbett. London, 1818. pp. iv —186. 

47. Cobbett's Evening Post. Daily newspaper. London, January 29.— 
April 1, 1820. 

48. Tub American Gardener ; or a treatise on the situation, soil, fencing, 
and laying-out of gardens ; on the making and managing of hot-beds and 
green-houses ; and on the propagation and cultivation of the several sorts 
of table vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. London, 1831. Par. 391 (.not 
paged). 

49. Cobbett's Monthly Religiocts Tracts. London, 1821-22 ; afterwards. 
Twelve Sermons on, 1. Hypocrisy and Cruelty; 2. Drunkenness; 3. Bri- 
bery; 4. The Rights of the Poor ; 5. Unjust Judges: 6. The Sluggard; 7. 
Murder; 8. Gaming; 9. Public robbery; 10. The Unnatural Mother; 11. 
Forbidding marriage ; 12. Parsons and Tithes. To these, was subsequently 
added : Good Friday, or the murder of Jesus Christ by the Jews, pp. 24. 
By William Cobbett. 12mo. pp. 295 : a later edition, pp. 240. 

50. Cottage Economy : containing information relative to the brewing of 
beer, making of bread, keeping of cows, pigs, bees, ewes, goats, poultry 
and rabbits, and relative to other matters deemed useful in the conducting 
of the affairs of a labourer's family ; to which are added, instructions rela- 
tive to the selecting, the cutting, and the bleaching of the plants of Eng- 
lish grass and grain, for the purpose of making hats and bonnets ; and also 
instructions for erecting and usmg ice-houses, after the Virginian manner. 
By William Cobbett. London, 1821. Par. 265 (not paged). 

51. Cobbett's Collective Commentaries : or, remarks on the proceedings 
in the collective wisdom of the nation, during the session which began on 
the 5th of February, and ended on the Cth of August, in the 3rd year of the 
reign of King George the Fourth, and in the year of our Lord, 1822; being 
the third session of the first parliament of that king. To which are sub- 
joined, a complete list of the acts passed during the session, with elucida- 
tions : and other notes and matters ; forming, altogether, a short, but clear 
history of the collective wisdom for the year. London, 1822. pp. 320. 
[Mostly from daily contributions to the Statesman newspaper.] 

52. [Prefarf, Ac ] The IIoi!sp;-noEiNo Husbandry • or, a treatise on the 
principles of tillage and vegetation, wherein is taught a method of intro- 
ducing a sort of vineyard culture into the corn-fields, in order to increase 
their product and diminish the common expenses. By Jethro TuU, of Shal- 
bome in the County of Berks. 

To which is prefixed, an introduction, explanatory of some circumstances 
connected with the liistory and division of the work ; and containing an 
account of certain experiments of recent date. By William Cobbett. Lon- 
don, 1822. 8vo. pp. XIX.— 332. 

63. Cobbett's Fsencu Gi^aumar ; or plain instructions for the learning of 



278 List of William Cohhett^s Publications. 

French London, 1823. [A book of exercises was added (1834). by James P. 
Cobbett.] 

54. A History of the PB0TEf»TANT Eeformatiok ik England and Ireland: 
showing how that event has impoverished and degraded the main body of 
the people in those countries. In a series of letters, addressed to all sensi- 
ble and just Englishmen. By William Cobbett. London, 1824-25. 12mo, 
478 par.; andSvo. A second Part; containing a list of the abbeys, prior- 
ies, nunneries, hospitals, and other religious foundations, in England and 
Wales, and in Ireland, confiscated, seized on, or alienated, by the Protest- 
ant " Eeformation " Sovereigns and Pariiaments. London, 1827. 

55. The Woodlands ; or, a treatise on the preparing of ground for plant- 
ing ; on the planting ; on the cultivating ; on the pruning ; and on the cut- 
ting down of forest trees and underwoods ; describing the usual growth and 
size, and the uses of each sort of tree, the seed of each, the season and 
manner of collecting the seed, the manner of preserving and of sowing it, 
and also the manner of managing the young plants until fit to plant out ; 
the trees being arranged in alphaDetical order, and the list of them, includ- 
ing those of America as well as those of England, and the English, French 
and Latin name being prefixed to the directions relative to each tree re- 
spectively. By William Cobbett. London, 1825. 8vo. Par. 601 (not paged). 

56. Cobbett's Poor Man's Friend ; or a defence of the rights of those who 
do the work and fight the battles. London, 1826. 12mo. pp. 72. 

57. The English Gardener ; a treatise on the kitchen garden, the flower 
garden, the shrubbery, and the orchard. With a calendar, giving instruc- 
tions relative to the sowings, plantings, prunings, and other labours, to be 
performed in the gardens, in each month ot the year. By William Cobbett. 
London, 1827. 8vo, and 12 mo, pp. 405. [An enlargement of "The American 
Gardener," with certain parts adapted to the English climate] 

58. A Treatise on Cobbett's Corn, containing instructions for propaga- 
ting and cultivating the plant, and for harvesting and preserving the crop ; 
and also an account of the several uses to which the produce is applied, 
with minute directions relative to each mode of application. By William 
Cobbett. London, 1828. 12mo. Par. 203. [The title-page and " contents " 
were printed on paper made from the corn ] 

59. [Translation.] Elements op the Eoman History, in English and 
French, from the foundation of Rome to the battle of Actium, selected 
from the best authors, ancient and modern, with a series of questions at 
the end of each chapter. For the use of schools and young persons in 
general. The English by William Cobbett; the French by J. H. Sievrac. 
London, 1828 12mo. pp. ix.— 265. 

60. The Emigrants' Guide ; In ten letters addressed to the taxpayers of 
England ; containing information of every kind, necessary to persons who 
are about to emigrate ; including several authentic and most interesting 
letters from English emigrants, now in America, to their friends in England ; 
and an account of the prices of house and land, recently obtained from 
America by Mr. Cobbett. By William Cobbett. London, 1828. 12mo. pp. 
168. 

61. Advice to Young Men, and (incidentally) to young women, in the 
middle and higher ranks of life : in a series of letters addressed to a youth, 
a bachelor, a lover, a husband, a father, a citizen, or a subject. By William 
Cobbett. London, 1830. 12mo. Par. 355. 

62. A Spelling-book, with appropriate lessons in reading, and with a 
stepping-stone to English grammar. By William Cobbett. London, 1831. 
12m©. pp. iv.— 185. 

63. Eleven Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, and 
English boroughmongering, delivered in the theatre of the Rotunda, Black- 
friars Bridge. By William Cobbett, with a portrait. London, 1830. 8vo. 

64. Cobbett's Plan op Parliamentary Rbpobm, addressed to the young 
men of England. London, 1830. 

65. Cobbett's Manchester Lectures, in support of his fourteen reform 
propositions , , . . 

To which is subjoined, a letter to Mr. O'Connellj on his speech, made in 
Dublin, on ttie 4th January, 1832, against the proposition for the establishing 
of poor laws In Ireland. London, 1832. 12m6. pp. xii.— 179. 

66. A Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales, containing 



Xiist of William Cobbeti's Publications. 279 

the names, in alphabetical order, of all the counties, with their several sub- 
dlvlsloua into hundreds, lathes, rapes, wapentakes, wards, or divisions ; 
and an account of the distribution of the counties into circuits, dioceses, 
and parliamentary divisions. Also, the names (under that of each county 
respectively) in alphabetical order, of all the cities, boroughs, market 
towns, villages, hamlets, and titbiugs, with the distance of each from 
London, or from the nearest market town, and with the population, and 
other Interesting particulars relative to each • besides which there are maps ; 
first, one of the whole country, showing the local situation of the counties 
relatively to each other ; and, then, each county is also preceeded by a 
map, showing, in the same manner, the local situations of the cities, 
boroughs, and market towns. Four tables are added ; first, a statistical 
table of all the counties, and then three tables, showing the new divisions 
and distributions enacted by the reform-law of 4th June, 1832. By William 
Cobbott. London, 1832. 8vo. pp. lixxiv.— 547. 

67. [Preface.} The Curse of Paper Monet and Banking : By William 
Gouge, of Philadelphia, 1833, London, 1833, with an introduction (pp. xxii.) 
by William Cobbett. 

68. History of the Regency and Reign or King George The Fottrth. 
By William Cobbett. London, 1830—1834, 2 vols. 12mo. 

69. [Abridgement.] Life op Andrew Jackson, President of the United 
States of America. Abridged and compiled by WUllam Cobbett, M.P. for 
Oldham. London, 1834. 12mo. pp. x.— 142. 

70. A NEW French and English Dictionary. In two parts. Part I. 
French and English ; Part II. English and French. By William Cobbett, 
M.P. for Oldham. London, 1834. 8vo. pp. xiv.— 408— 418. 

71. Surplus Population, and Poor-Law Bill ; a comedy in three acts. 
By William Cobbett, M P. London, 1835. 

72. Cobbett's Legacy to Labourers ; or, what is the right which the lords, 
baronets and squires, have to possess the lands, or to make the laws ? In 
six letters, addressed to the working people of the whole kingdom. With a 
dedication to Sir Robert Peel. London, 1835. 16mo. p. 141. 

73. Cobbett's Legacy to Peei, ; or, an inquiry with respect to what the 
right honourable baronet will now do vrith the House of Commons, with 
Ireland, with the English Church and the Dissenters, with the swarms of 
pensioners, Ac., with the crown lands and the army, with the currency and 
the debt. In six letters. London, 1835. 18mo. 

74. Cobbett's Legacy to Parsons ; or, have the clergy of the established 
church an equitable right to the tithes, or to any other thing called church 
property, greater than the dissenters have to the same ' And, ought there, 
or ought there not, to be a separation of the Church from the State ? In 
six letters, addressed to the church-parsons in general, Including the cathe- 
dral and college clergy and the bishops. With a dedication to Blomfield, 
Bishop of London. London, 1835. i6mo. pp.192. 



281 



INDEX. 



Adams, Professor, on English finan- 
cial legislation, 177. 
Ames, Oakes, his predecessors, 95. 
Amiens, peace of, 84. 

Bache, Benjamin, his warfare with 
Cobbett, .OG-fiO. 

Bamford, Samuel, describes Cob- 
bett, 208. 

Battle of Dorking, 93. 

Bennett, James Gordon, 45, 226. 

Black, Mr., 22C, 368. 

Blakely, Dr., on Cobbett's convei-- 
sation, 213. 

Bradford, Cobbett's American pub- 
lisher, 47, 50. 

Brougham, Lord, 160; Cobbett's 
opinion of, 265, 268 on Bacon, 269. 

Buckle, his opinion ot reformers, 1 ; 
his History of Civilization, 171 ; on 
free trade, 211 ; on George III , 238. 

Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, on the 
result of the "Juvema" trials, 
102 ; his remarks on Cobbett in 
prison, 126 ; on Cobbett's cheap 
newspapers, l.>6, 202 ; his descrip- 
tion of Cobbett ia Parliament, 214. 

Burdett, Sir Francis, presides at the 
dinner given to Cobbett, 147 ; his 
loan to Cobbett, 168 ; letter to 
Cobbett on his debt, 181 ; fruitless 
attempt at reconciliation be- 
tween him and Cobbett, 193; his 
influence at tlie dinner given to 
him, 203, 204. 

Burke, Edmund, on the French 
Revolution, 181 ; compared with 
Paine, 187 ; his pension, 189, 233 ; 
compares taxes to dews, 233. 

Bums, Robert, 9. 

Butler. Samuel, his modesty, 264. 



Canning, George, his compliments 
to Cobbett, 72; his "instinctive 
patriotism," 246, 251 ; his nick- 
name, 268. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 225 ; on the United 
States. 269. 

Caroline, Queen, her history, 196. 

Castlereagh, Lord, originator of tho 
name "Twopenny Trash," 156; 
how he wanted to settle Cobbett, 
167; Cobbett's remarks on his 
death, 199. 

Catholics, Cobbett's friendship for, 
25C. 

Chamberlayne, Mr. Cobbett's praise 
of, 243. 

Charles II., his conduct 264. 

Chilworth, description of, 241. 

Cobbett, William, birth and parent- 
age, 3-5 ; youth, 5-7 ; goes to Lon- 
don, 9; enters a lawyer's office, 9, 
10 ; enters the army, 11 ; how he 
studied grammar, 12 ; his promo- 
tion in the army, 14 ; his conduct 
in the army, 15; his scrape at 
C hatham, 16 ; his praise of the 
army, 17 ; marries and goes to 
France, 17; conduct in love and 
courtship, 18 ; his description of 
New Brunswick, 21 ; the Court- 
martial, his account of it, 28; ex- 
perience in France, 35 ; arrival in 
Philadelphia, and employment as 
a teacher, 36 applies to Mr. Jef- 
ferson for a situation, 36 ; his early 
republicanism, 37 ; first appear- 
ance as an author, 38 ; his fable 
against the democrats, 40; sides 
with tho Federalists and supports 
Washington, 42; writes an essay 
on the Jay treaty, 43 ; publisheg 



282 



Index. 



Porcupine's Gazette, 44; creates 
a host of enemies, 44, 45 ; the Eng- 
lish ambassador's offer to him, 47 ; 
how he fought the democrats, 48 ; 
Mr. Watson's accusation concern- 
ing the Court-martial, 49 ; meeting 
with Talleyrand, 54 ; return to 
England, 60; libel suits against 
him, 60, 61 ; affair with Dr. Eush, 
61 ; his reception by the honorable 
Mr. Windham, 66 ; the Pitt dinner- 
party, 66 ; describes his return to 
his native village, 69 ; the scales 
taken from his eyes, 75 ; revival 
of Porcupine, 81 ; his affair with 
the editor of the True Briton, 82 ; 
failure of the English Porcupine, 
83 ; establishes a business in Lon- 
don, 84 ; letters to Lord Hawkes- 
bury and Addington, 85 ; begins 
the Register, 86 ; his paper on 
Napoleon, "Important Considera- 
tions," 87 ; attempts to bribe him 
in the Cakes Ames manner, 94; 
how he felt after the conviction 
and fine for the "Juverna" let- 
ters, 102 ; how he separated from 
Pitt, 103 ; the happy years of his 
life at Botley, 107 ; Miss Mitford's 
description of his happy home, 
107; his relations with Dr. Mit- 
ford, 113 ; opposes the grant of an 
increase of the income of the 
royal family, 116 ; his remarks on 
the trial of the Duke of York, 119 
his trial and imprisonment, 123 
how he conducted himself, 126 
conducts his own defence, 127 
the works he was publishing at 
this time, 129 ; remarks on the 
corruption of the English press, 
136 ; how he lived in prison ; how 
he taught his children, 139, 263 
writes " Paper against Gold," 140 
results of his imprisonment, 143 
his visitors, 143 ; refuses a sub- 
scription, 142; his conduct as a 
husband, 143 ; his return to Bot- 
ley, 145; Watson's attack, 147; 
the dinner given him on his libera- 
tion, 149 ; his great mistake in the 
speech he made at the Crown and 



Anchor Tavern, 153 ; the unhappy 
year 1817, 157 ; his departure for 
America, 159 ; his farewell address 
to his countrymen, 159 ; Watson's 
charge of fleeing from his credit- 
ors, 163 ; his income, 165 ; his debt 
to Sir Francis Burdett, 168; his 
second residence in America, 170 . 
his changed sentiments regarding 
the United States, 172 -. his com- 
parison of life in Long Island with 
life in Hampshire, England, 173 ; 
his great financial mistake, 174; 
his return to England, 178 ; his 
conduct with regard to his cred- 
itors, 179 ; his resurrection of 
Paine, 183 ; compares Paine with 
Burke, 187 ; fear of his arrival at 
Manchester, 191 ; dinner at the 
Crown and Anchor, 191 ; starts a 
daily paper, 192 ; bankruptcy, 192; 
his penny subscription, 192 ; Wat- 
son's sneer, 193 ; stands for Cov- 
entry, 194 ; defence of Queen 
Caroline, 196 ; his remarks on 
Castlereagh's death, 199 ; his re- 
ception by the people of Preston, 
200 ; the openness of his charac- 
ter, 202 ; his extraordinary con- 
duct at the dinner given to Sir 
Francis Burdett, 203 ; once more 
prosecuted for sedition, 205; 
comes out victorious, 307 ; his lee ■ 
turing tours, 208 ; described by 
Bamford, 208 ; the strongest per- 
sonality in England, 209 ; what his 
contemporaries thought of him, 
209 ; elected to Parliament, 212 ; 
visits Scotland and Ireland, 213 ; 
his career in Parliament, 213 ; ill- 
ness and death, 216.— His woeks : 
How he taught grammar, 319 ; the 
charm of his style, 223 ; compared 
with other political writers, 225; 
how he handled financial ques- 
tions, 237 ; spoken versus written 
language, 330; his opinions of 
Burke, Adam Smith, Pitt, Fox, 
and Paine, 233 ; his wit and humor, 
239 ; his rural rides, 241 ; how he 
could praise, 243 ; interview with 
the chimney-sweeper, 245 ; analy- 



Tiidea 



283 



sis of a prince's letter, 247 ; bis 
defence of the laboring classes, 
250 ; his famous History of the Re- 
formation, 253; bis remarks on the 
sand hill, 200 ; his opinion of him- 
self, 263; bis faculty of nick-nam- 
ing, 268 ; peculiarities and eccen- 
tricities, 270 bis character, 269. 

Cobbett, Mrs., how treated by her 
husband, 143. 

Cochrane, Lord, bis career, 108. 

Coleridge, S. T , on Cobbett, 209. 

Commissions in the English army, 
118. 

Congdon, Mr., on self-esteem, 267. 

Conkling, Roscoe, bis infatuation, 
257. 

Consolidated Fund, 227. 

Convention of (intra, 230. 

Corporation of the city of London, 
280. 

Debbeig, Colonel, his friendship for 

Cobbett, 13. 
Denman, Lord, annoyed by Cobbett, 

207. 
Draper, Professor, on the middle 

ages, 258. 

EUenborougb, Lord, 100; tries Cob- 
bett twice for libel, 124 ; tries Lord 
Cochrane, 108. 

Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer, on 
Cobbett's death, 218. 

Emmett, Robert, prosecuted by 
Plunkett, 100. 

England after the French Revolu- 
tion, 131 ; compared with the 
United States, 176, 205. 

English Grammar Cobbett's, 220. 

Erskine, Lord, bis nickname, 261. 

EvartB, William E., 150. 

Fable of the jars and the jordens, 40. 

Fable of the wolf and the dog, 80. 

Fielden, Mr., helps Cobbett Into 
Parliament, 212. 

Fielding, Henry, 16, 171. 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, his ca- 
reer, 67. 

Fox, Charles James, compared to 
Demosthenes, 286. 



Franklin, Benjamin, Cobbett's at- 
tack on, 60. 
French Grammar, Cobbett's, 220. 
Fund, consolidated, 227. 

George III., his incapacity, 114 ; his 
conduct toward Burke, 139; his 
prosecution of the American war, 
135 ; his reception of the citizens 
of London, 230. 

German mercenaries, 135. 

Gibbs, Sir Vicar y, on "Juvema's" 
letters, 100 ; prosecutes Cobbett, 
157 ; Cobbett on him, 138 ; Leigh 
Hunt's description of him, 132. 

Gifford, John, bis rewards, 76, 77. 

Gifford, William, his sinecure, 77. 

Goethe, 185. 

Greeley, Horace, compared with 
Cobbett, 45, 217, 226 : his opinion 
of poverty, 172. 

Habeas Corpus Act, suspended, 157. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 42. 

Hansard's Reports, begun by Cob- 
bett, 129. 

Hardwicke, Lord, 100. 

Hazlitt, on Cobbett, 202. 

Henry VIII., 259. 

History of the Reformation, Cob- 
bett's, 253. 

Horner, Francis, bis ability as a 
statesman, 175 ; Cobbett's refer- 
ence to, 265. 

Hume. David, 185, 270. 

Hunt, Lei(.h, on Pitt's policy, 106; 
his imprisonment, 132 ; bis jeal- 
ousy of Cobbett. 132 ; sarcasm on 
Castlereagh, 200. 

Infidels, feeling toward, 185. 
Ingersoll, Colonel, on Paine, 184. 

Jefferson, letter to Cobbett, 37,42.74. 

Jeffrey, Lord, on Cobbett, 210. 

Jews, Cobbett's hatred of, 270. 

Johnson, Doctor, defends the gov- 
ernment, 1.35 ; his interview with 
George III., 239 ; how he is re- 
garded, 185 ; his style, 225. 

Johnson, Mr., author of the "Ju- 
vema " letters, 101. 



281 



index. 



" Juvema," his letters, 99. 

Macaulay, his fortune, 171 ; on 
House of Commons, 214 ; his his- 
tory of England, 256 ; on Cobbelt, 
257. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, in Parlia 
ment, 214 ; on the game-laws and 
on witchcraft, 239. 

Martens, his Law of Nations, trans- 
lated by Cobbett, 50. 

MacKean, Chief Justice, his enmity 
to Cobbett, 60. 

Melville, Lord, 43, 105. 

Mill, John Stuart, on historians, 227. 

Mitford, Doctor, his relations with 
Cobbett, 112. 

Mitford, Miss, describes Cobbett's 
home, 107. 

Mueller, the Swiss historian, his 
opinion of Cobbett's style. 

Napoleon, his reading, 12, 104 ; how 
Cobbett wanted to receive him, 
86 ; Cobbett on his second mar- 
riage, 271. 

Nicknaming, Cobbett's faculty of, 
268. 

O'Connell, Daniel, invites Cobbett 

to his home, 212. 
O'Gorman, Cobbett's letter for, 256. 

Paine, Cobbett's life of, 85 ; his work 
on finance, 95 ; his bones brought 
to England by Cobbett, 183 ; feel- 
ings of Americans towards him, 
184; defence of him by Colonel 
Ingersoll, 184; what Cobbett 
thought of him, 186, 187 ; compared 
with Burke, 187 ; what he did for 

. the United States, 188 ; on Pitt's 
sinking-fund, 236. 

Parker, Theodore, 205. 

Pascal, Blaise, 189. 

Peel, Sir Robert, Cobbett's opposi- 
tion to, 214 ; nickname, 268. 

Perceval, Mr., refuses Cobbett's 
overtures, 152 ; his defence of the 
Duke of York, 121, 248. 

Pestalozzi, his system applied by 
Cobbett, 263. 



Pitt, William, Cobbett's letter to 
him, 32, 38 ; his presence at the 
dinner-party, 66 ; his resignation, 
84 ; his scheme to get rid of the 
national debt, 96 ; his character, 
105 ; his policy, 104, 235 ; compared 
to Cicero, 235 ; his sinking-fund, 
236. 

Plunkett, solicitor-general for Ire- 
land, attacked by " Juvema," 100. 

Portugal, British generals in, 230. 

Princes, how the English love them, 
116 ; their uselessness, 193. 

Priestley, Dr., Cobbett on, 38. 

Prussia, its constitution, 185. 

Randolph, Washington's secretary 

of state, his treachery, 71. 
Raymond, Henry A., S26. 
Reeves, John, 76, 152. 
Reformation, history of, 253. 
Revolutionary war, how supported, 

135. 
Rogers, George, his friendship for 

Cobbett, 152. 
Rose, George, Cobbett's letter to 

him, 68. 
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, his libel-suit 

against Cobbett, 61. 

Scarlett, 246 ; his celibacy bill, 251. 

Schiller, 185. 

Schurz, Carl, 150. 

Scotchmen, Cobbett's jealousy of, 
235, 237, 270; their part in the 
American Revolutionary war, 135. 

Scott, Walter, 165, 227, 270. 

Scotch writers, 135. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, attacks 
Cobbett, 43. 

Sinecures in England, 79. 

Smith, Adam, Cobbett on, 233. 

Spoken versus writtenlanguage, 230. 

Svnft, Dean, compared with Cob- 
bett, 40 ; his fate, 167 ; at the house 
of Sir William Temple, 264. 

Talleyrand, interview with Cobbett, 

54. 
Trevelyan, Otto, on England after 

the French Revolution, 133; on 

Cobbett's Register, 217. 



Index. 



285 



Voltaire, 286. 

Wardle, Mr., on the Duke of York, 
118 ; on foreign troops, 123. 

Washington, George, Cobbett's es- 
teem for, 43, 1&5. 

Watson, John, on the Court-martial 
affair, 49 ; charges Cobbett with 
fleeing from debt, 16.3 ; his sneer 
at Cobbett's subscription, 193; 
mentioned, 51, 52, 83, 147, 190, 200, 
201, 221, 267. 

Wilberforce, despised by Cobbett, 
270. 



Wilson, John, on Cobbett, 210. 

Windham, Mr., his praise of Cob- 
bett's early writings. 43; his re- 
ception of Cobbett, 66. 

Wright, Cobbett's partner, 152; 
sues Cobbett for libel, 152. 

Writers for the press, Cobbett's 
opinion of, 136. 

Yonge, Sir George, 31. 
York, Duke of, his trial, 117 ; analy- 
sis of his letter, 247. 



A GRAMMAR 



English Language 



IS A SERIES OF LETTERS; 



INTENDED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND OF YOUNG 

PERSONS IN GENERAL, BUT MORE ESPECIALLY 

FOR THE USE OF SOLDIERS, SAILORS, 

APPRENTICES AND PLOUGH-BOYS. 



WILLIAM COBBETT. 

TO WHICH ARE ADDED 

SIX LESSONS, INTENDED TO PREVENT STATESMEN FROM USING 

FALSE GRAMMAR, AND FROM WRITING IN AN 

AWKWARD MANNER. 

With Notes by Robert Waters, 



)c 



Editor^s Preface. vii 

Brown, Green, Wliite, and Black, may be thi'own into the 
fire, and the world will be none the worse off; for, in my 
opinion, boys and gu'ls ought to be taught the principles 
of English grammar without placing any text-book what- 
ever in their hands. Never did the Board of Education 
of New York adopt a wiser resolution than that recently 
adopted, abolishuig grammar text-books from the public 
schools, in all but the two higher grades. Any person, 
that requii'es a book m the hands of his scholars in order 
to teach them the principles of English grammar, is no 
teacher; he is simply a crammer-down of other people's 
teaching, which he has himself been unable to master. 
A genuine teacher requires, in order to teach grammar, 
nothing but the blackboard and a piece of chalk ; all the 
rest must come out of his head or out of the heads of his 
scholar's. He may make use of what books he pleases in 
building up his own knowledge ; but no book should ever 
be placed in the hands of his scholars. To childi-en, 
books on the subject of grammar are generally in a dead 
language; it is all Greek to them; the living speech of 
the teacher is the only language they can understand. 
Away, therefore, with all grammar text-books; for they 
ai'e the dead-weights of progress, fatal to all true teaching. 

Nor is this book of Cobbett's intended for boys and 
gii'ls at school; it is for those who ai'e studying out of 
school; for those who are trying to acquire that real, 
practical, profitable knowledge which is acquired by 
self -exertion, or self-help; for those who have no teacher, 
and ai-e striving to teach themselves: for those who 
■v\dsh to learn in order to teach; for those who have 
failed to make any proper progi'ess by means of other 
grammai's, and now wish to understand and master the 
subject for themselves. 

I do not deny that this book, being so entirely different 
from all ( ther gi-ammai's ; so conversational, easy, and 
plain in its chai'acter; I do not deny that it may be ad- 



viii Editor's Preface. 

vantageously used by school-boys tinder a competent 
teacher; nay, even under an incompetent teacher; — ^in 
fact, if the teacher must use a text-book, he cannot select 
a better one than Cobbett's ; — ^but what I maintain is, that 
it is the only grammar that can be profitably used with- 
out a teacher ; the only book that can teach grammar by 
ITSELF to those who are learning for themselves. As 
long as principles last, and as long as men learn by using 
their reason, grammar in some shape must be taught; 
and this being granted, I contend that there is no better 
WAY of teaching it than this way of Cobbett's. Of 
course, no child ought ever to be taught a word about 
grammar until he has learned to read fluently, and even 
write tolerably well, the words of his native language; 
not until he has attained his twelfth or fourteenth year; 
for grammar is a matter which cannot be rightly under- 
stood and assimilated before that age. This is another 
reason why the action of the New York Board of Educa- 
tion is a wise one. 

Some of Mr. "White's readers — feeling, no doubt, as I 
did, that even if all ordinary grammars are worthless, 
some grammar of some sort is necessary, and being de- 
lighted by his clear and sensible manner of writing — 
requested him, to write a grammar ; one of them declaring 
that if he did so, a future generation would rise up and 
call him blessed. Whereupon Mr. "White makes the fol- 
lowing amusing and significant reply: "I would gladly 
act on this suggestion if it were probable that any re- 
sponsible and competent publisher would make it prudent 
for me to do so. It would be deUghtful to believe that 
the next generation would rise up and call me blessed ; 
but I am of necessity much more interested in the ques- 
tion whether the present generation would rise up and 
put its hand into its pocket to pay me for my labor. Any 
one who is acquainted with the manner in which school- 
books are 'introduced' in this country, knows that the 



Editor''s Preface. ix 

opinions of competent persons upon the merits of a book 
have the least possible influence upon its coming suf- 
ficiently into vogiie to make its pubhcation profitable; 
and publishers, like other men of business, work for 
money. One of the trade made, I know — although n'^t 
to me — an answer like this to a proposition to pubHsh a 
short series of school-books: 'I believe your books are 
excellent ; but supposing that they are all that you be- 
lieve them to be, I should, after stereotyping them, be 
obliged to sj)end $100,000 in introducing them. I am 
not prepared to do this, and therefore I must say No, at 
once. The merit of a book has nothing to do with its 
value in trade.' And the speaker was a man of experi- 
ence."* 

Now, I am strongly inclined to think that these ad- 
mirers of Mr. White's, and all those disgusted with the 
ordinary grammars and the ordinary methods of teaching 
grammar, will, if made acquainted with Cobbett's little 
grammar, Avhich has long been out of print in this covm- 
try, find what they want, or nearly what they want ; for 
there does not exist in our language a clearer exposition 
of the nature of EngHsh grammar than this by Cobbett. 
The very language of the grammar itself is a capital illus- 
tration of how one ought to write ; and if the scholai''s 
understanding the subject is a true test of the proper 
learning of it, then no other grammar can, in the attain- 
ment of this end, be compared with this ; for thousands, 
who have failed to understand the subject by other gi*am- 
mars, have succeeded by this, and have, no doubt, risen 
up and called Cobbett blessed for wnting it. Even Mi-. 
White himself, who looks upon most other grammai's as 
worse than useless, declai'es of Cobbett's grammar, that 
he has "read it with great admiration, both for the 
soundness of its teaching and the excellence of its sys- 

♦ " Words and their Uses," p. 437. 



X Editor's Preface. 

tern."* And he also declares, I tliiiib (I quote from 
memory), that if grammar is to be taught at all, it can- 
not be taught better than by this method of Cobbett's. 

At a meeting of school superintendents held recently 
in Iowa, one of the superintendents read a paper on text- 
books, in which he says: "Men of letters and men of 
science have sought to veil their thoughts with the ob- 
scurity of strange and foreign terms rather than to make 
the road following them ia their investigation easy. They 
have sought the vain-glory of stultifaction in their selec- 
tion of a medium for the communication of their thoughts, 
rather than the lasting praise consequent upon a simple 
style. Hence the difficulty in following them in their 
text-books, and the unprofitableness of being taught how 
to read thought from printed characters." If there is 
one writer in the whole range of English literature who 
deserves more praise than another for avoiding this very 
style, so common among ordinary writers ; if there is one 
author who is more conspicuous than any other for cloth- 
ing his thoughts in plain, intelligible language, it is Wil- 
liam Cobbett. In all that goes to the making up of good 
English speech, he has no superior. He was the first to 
show how one ought to write for young people, the first 
to write in a manner that plain people could understand; 
the first to instruct in a truly edifying manner. It is his 
great glory that he uses simple, plain language, and he 
makes every subject he touches, whether it be the defini- 
tion of a verb or the explanation of the nature of the 
national debt, perfectly clear and intelligible. 

The Editor has endeavored to write the notes in some- 
thing of the same plain and easy style as that in which 
Cobbett has written the grammar, keeping constantly in 
mind that he is addressing a youth of fourteen or fifteen 
years of age. Of course, he has never for a moment 
thought of imitating Cobbett; but simply and only of 
making the matter plain. 

* "Every-day English," Letters to the New York Times. 



Contents of the Grammar. 



Letter ^^^e 

I. — Introdviction 1 

n. Definitiou of Grammar and of its Different 

Branches or Parts 8 

in.— Etymology : the Different Pai'ts of Speech, 

or Sorts of Words 15 

IV. — Etymology of Articles 24 

V. — Etymology of Nouns 27 

YI. — ^Etymology of Pronouns 38 

VU. — Etymology of AJjectives 47 

Vin.— Etymology of Verbs 50 

IX. — Etymology of Adverbs 83 

X. — Etymology of Prepositions 86 

XI. — Etymology of Conjunctions 89 

Xn. — Cautionary Kemarks 89 

Xni. — Syntax Generally Considered 92 

XIV. Syntax : the Points and Marks made use of 

in Writing 93 

XV.— Syntax, as relating to Ai'ticles 106 

XVI.— Syntax, as relating to Nouns 109 

XVn.— Syntax, as relating to Pronouns 115 

XVin.— Syntax, as relating to Adjectives 139 

XIX.— Syntax, as relatuig to Verbs 142 



xii Contents of the Orammar. 

Letter Page 
XX. — Syntax, as relating to Adverbs, Preposi- 
tions, and Conjunctions 184 

XXI. — Specimens of False Grammar, taken from 
the Writings of Dr. Johnson, and from 

those of Dr. Watts 187 

XXn. — Errors and Nonsense in a King's Speech . . 209 
XXm. — On Putting Sentences together, and on 

Figurative Language 223 

THE SIX LESSONS. 

XXTV. — Six Lessons, intended to prevent States- 
men from using False Grammar, and 
from writing in an Awkward Manner. . . 230 
Lesson 

I. — On the Speech of the Eight Honorable 
Manners Sutton, Speaker of the House 

of Commons 233 

n. — On His Majesty's Speech at the Close of 

the Session in 1819 . , 240 

III. — On the Note of Lord Castlereagh relative 

to the Museums at Paris , 246 

IV. — On the Dispatch of the Duke of Wellington 

relative to the Same Subject 252 

V. — On a Note to Lord Castlereagh relative to 

the French Slave Trade 256 

VI. — On Dispatches of the Marquis Wellesley 
relative to the State of Ireland in 1822 . 
— Charge of the Bishop of Winchester. . . 260 



DEDICATION. 



TO HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTV, 

QUEEN CAROLINE. 

May it please youk Majesty, 

A work, having for its objects, to lay the soUd founda- 
tion of hterary knowledge amongst the laboring classes 
of the community ; to give practical effect to the natui'al 
genius found in the soldier, the sailor, the apj^rentice, and 
the plough-boy; and to make that genius a perennial 
source of wealth, strength, and safety to the kingdom; 
such a work naturally seeks the approbation of your 
majesty, who, amongst all the royal personages of the 
present age, is the only one that appeal's to have justly 
estimated the value of the people. 

The nobles and the hierarchy have long had the arro- 
gance to style themselves the pillars that support the 
throne. But, as your majesty has now clearly ascertained, 
royalty has, in the hour of need, no efficient supporters 
but the people. 

Dming your majesty's long, arduous, magnanimous, 
and gallant straggle against matchless fraud and bound- 



xiv Dedication. 

less power, it must have inspired you with great confi- 
dence to perceive the wonderful intelligence and talent of 
your millions of friends ; while your majesty cannot have 
failed to observe, that the haughty and insolent few who 
have been your enemies, have, upon all occasions, ex- 
hibited an absence of knowledge, a poverty of genius, a 
feebleness of intellect, which nothing but a constant asso- 
ciation with malevolence and perfidy could prevent from 
being ascribed to dotage or idiocy. 

That to her, whose great example is so well calculated 
to inspire us with a love of useful knowledge, and to 
stimulate us to perseverance in its pursuit ; that to her, 
the records of whose magnanimity and courage will make 
mean spite and cowardice hide their heads to the end of 
time ; that to her, who, while in foreign lands, did honor 
to Britain's throne, and to Britain herself, by opening the 
debtor's prison, and by setting the captive Christian free ; 
that to her, who has so long had to endure all the suffer- 
ings that malice could invent and tyranny execute ; that 
to her, God may grant, to know no more of sorrow, but 
long to live in health, prosperity, and glory, surrounded 
and supported by a grateful and admiring people, is the 
humble prayer of 

Tour majesty's most dutiful 

And most devoted servant, 

WILLIAM COBBETT. 
London, Nov. 25th, 1820, 



TO 



Mr. James Paul Cobbett. 



LETTEE I. 

INTRODTTCTION. 

North Hempstead, Long Island, Dec. 6, 1817. 
My dear Little James : 

You have now arrived at the age of f oiu'teeu years with- 
out ever having been bidden, or even advised, to look into 
a book ; and all you know of reading or of Avi'iting you 
owe to yoiu* own unbiassed taste and choice. But, while 
you have hved unpersecuted by such importunities, you 
have had the very great advantage of bemg bred up under 
a roof beneath which no cards, no dice, no gaming, no 
senseless pastime of any description, ever found a place. 
In the absence of these, books natmally became your com- 
panions diu'ing some part of your time : you have read 
and have written, because you saw your elders read and 
write, just as you have learned to ride and hvmt and 
shoot, to dig the beds in the gai'den, to trim the flowers 
and to prune the trees. The healthful exei'cise, and the 
pleasui-es, unmixed with fear, which you have derived 
from these sources, have given you "a sound mind in a 
sound body," and this, says an English writer, whose 
works you will by- and- by read, '' is the greatest blessing 
that God can give to man." 

It is true that this is a very great blessing ; but mere 
1 



2 Tntroductioti. 

soundness of mind, without any mental acquirements, is 
possessed by millions ; it is an ordinary possession ; and 
it gives a man no fair pretensions to merit, because he 
owes it to accident, and not to any thing done by himself. 
But knowledge, in any art or science, being always the 
fruit of observation, study, or practice, gives, in proportion 
to its extent and usefulness, the possessor a just claim to 
respect. • We do, indeed, often see all the outward marks 
of respect bestowed upon persons merely because they 
are rich or powerful ; but these, while they are bestowed 
with pain, are received without pleasure. They drop from 
the tongue or beam from the features, but have no com- 
munication with the heart. They are not the voluntary 
offerings of admiration, or of gratitude ; but are extorted 
from the hopes, the fears, the anxieties, of poverty, of 
meanness, or of guilt. Nor is respect due to honesty, 
fidelity, or any such qualities; because dishonesty and 
perfidy are crimes. To entitle a man to respect, there 
must be something of his own doing, beyond the bounds 
of his well-known duties and obligations. 

Therefore, being extremely desirous to see you, my 
dear James, an object of respect, I now call upon you to 
apply your mind to the acquiring of that kind of knowl- 
edge which is inseparable from an acquaintance with 
books ; for, though knowledge in every art and science is, 
if properly applied, worthy of praise in proj)ortion to its 
extent and usefulness, there are some kinds of knowledge 
which are justly considered as of a superior order, not 
only because the possession of them is a proof of more 
than ordinary industry and talent, but because the appli- 
cation of them has naturally a more powerful influence in 
the affairs and on the condition of our friends, acquaint- 
ances, neighbors, and coimtry. Blake, the Titchfield 
thatcher, who broke his leg into splinters in falling from 
a wheat-rick, was, on account of the knowledge which he 
possessed, beyond that of laborers in general, an object 



Introduction. 3 

of respect ; but, in its degi-ee, and in the feelings from 
which it arose, how diflereut was that respect fi'om the 
respect due to oui* excellent neighbor, Mr. Blundell, who 
restored the leg to perfect use, after six garrison and 
army siu-geons had declared that it was impossible to 
preserve it, and that, if the leg were not cut off, the man 
must die within twenty-four hoiu's ! It is probable that 
the time of IMi-. Blundell was not, on this occasion, occu- 
pied more, altogether, than four days and four nights; 
yet, the effect was a great benefit to be enjoyed by Blake 
for probably thuty or forty yeai'S to come : and, while we 
must see that this benefit would necessai'ily extend itself 
to the whole of his numerous family, we must not over- 
look those feelmgs of pleasure which the cvu-e would 
natiu-ally produce amongst friends, acquaintances, and 
neighbors. 

The respect due to the jjrofession of the sui'geon or 
physician is, however, of an order inferior to that which 
is due to the profession of the law ; for whether in the 
chai'acter of coiuisellor or of judge, here are required, not 
only uncommon industry, labor, and talent, in the acquiie- 
ment of knoAvledge ; but the application of this knowledge 
in defentling the jjroperty of the feeble or incautious 
against the attacks of the strong and the wiles of the 
crafty, in affording protection to innocence and seeming 
punishment to guilt, has, in the affairs of men and on 
theif condition in life, a much more extensive and pow- 
erful influence than can possibly arise from the appli- 
cation of surgical or medical knowledge. 

To the functions of statesmen and legislators is due the 
highest respect which can be shown by man to any tiling 
liumjui; for, not only are the industry, labor, and talent 
lequisite in the acquirement of knowdedge, still greater 
and far greater here, than in the professioii of the law; 
Imt, of the appHcation of this knowledge, the effects are 
BO transcendent in point of magnitude as to place them 



4 Introduction. 

beyond all tlie bounds of comparison. Here it is not in- 
dividual persons with their families, friends, and neigh- 
bors that are affected; but whole countries and communi- 
ties. Here the matters to be discussed and decided on 
are peace or war, and the liberty or slavery, happiness or 
misery, of nations. Here a single instance of neglect, a 
single oversight, a single error, may load with calamity 
millions of men, and entail that calamity on a long series 
of future generations. 

This is true enough ; but it is a remarliable fact that nearly all 
the efforts of legislators, political as well as ecclesiastical, have 
been of such a nature as to cause anything but respect for tliem. 
The liistorian Buckle shows that the great bulk of the enactments 
of legislators, since the beginning of history, have been conducive 
of results directly opposite to those for whicli they were intended ; 
that is, evil results ; and that tlie only beneficial legislation of mod- 
ern times has consisted in the undoing of what previous legislators 
have done. So that, of all the personages in history, none, unhap- 
pily, are deserving of more profound contempt, or, at least, of less 
esteem, than precisely those very men who ought to have secured 
the greatest esteem, legislators. And all this, not because they 
were bad men, but because they were lacking in knowledge. 

And if this is the case with law-makers of honest intentions, 
what shall we say of those execrable wretches, those deadly can- 
cers on the body politic, who, on becoming members of a legisla- 
ture, sell themselves, body and soul, to wealthy corporations? 
What shall we tliink of tJieir influence on the progress and welfare 
of the people, whose interests they were elected to protect and to 
promote ? Such creatures lose not only the esteem of all honest 
men, but their own esteem, their self-esteem ; they become con- 
temptible, not only in their own eyes, but in the eyes of those who 
buy them; and as to the future, the hottest, deepest gulfs in 
hell are yawning for them ! 

As a contrast to Buckle's judgment of the great crowd of igno- 
rant and consequently pernicious legislators, consider this remark- 
able statement which the same writer makes of the power and 
influence of one man of real knowledge : ' ' Well may it be said of 
Adam Smith (author of ' The Wealth of Nations '), and said too 
without fear of contradiction, that this solitary Scotchman has, by 
the publication of one single work, contributed more towards the 



Ttitrodtcction. ■ 5 

happiness of man, than has been effected by the united abilities of 
all tliL' statosnion and legislators of wliom history has preserved an 
authentic account."— Hist, of Civilization, Vol I., p. 155. 

But, my dear James, you will always bear in mind that 
as the degree and quahty of our respect rise in proportion 
to the influence which the diflferent branches of knowledge 
natm-ally have in the affaii-s and on the condition of men, 
so, in the cases of an imperfection in knowledge, or of 
neglect in its apphcation, or of its perversion to bad pur- 
poses, all the feelings which ai'e opposite to that of respect 
rise m the same proportion. To ignorant pretenders to 
smgeiy and medicme Ave award om- contempt and scorn ; 
on time-serving or treacherous counsellors, and on cruel 
or partial judges, we inflict oui* detestation and abhor- 
rence; while, on rapacious, coiTupt, perfidious, or tyran- 
nical statesmen and legislators, the voice of human natui'e 
cries aloud for execration and vengeance. 

The pai'ticulai" jDath of knowledge to be pui'sued by you 
will be of yoiu' own choosing ; but, as to knowledge con- 
nected with books, there is a step to be taken before you 
can fau'ly enter upon any path. In the immense field of 
this kind of knowledge, innumerable are the paths, and 
Grammar is the gate of entrance to them all. And if 
grammai* is so useful in the attaining of knowledge, it is 
absolutely necessary in order to enable the possessor to 
communicate, by writing, that knowledge to others, with- 
out which commmiication the possession must be com- 
paratively useless to himself in many cases, and, in almost 
all cases, to the rest of mankind. 

The actions of men proceed from their thoughts. In 
order to obtain the cooperation, the concurrence, or the 
consent, of others, we must communicate our thoughts to 
them. The means of this communication are words; and 
gi-ammai' teaches us hoto to make use of %oords. There- 
f(n-e, in all the ranks, degrees, a:i;l situations of life, a 
knowledge of the principles and rules of granuuar must 



6 Introduction. 

be useful; in some situations it must be necessary to 
tlie avoiding of really injurious errors; and in no sit- 
uation, wbicli calls on man to place his thoughts upon 
paper, can the possession of it fail to be a source of self- 
gratulation, or the want of it a cause of mortification and 
sorrow. 

But, to the acquiring of this branch of knowledge, my 
dear son, there is one motive which, though it ought at 
all times, to be strongly felt, ought, at the present time, 
to be so felt in an extraordinary degree : I mean that de- 
sire which every man, and especially every young man, 
should entertain to be able to assert with effect the rights 
and liberties of his country. When you come to read the 
history of those laws of England by which the freedom 
of the people has been secured, and by which the happi- 
ness and j)ower and glory of our famed and beloved coun- 
try have been so greatly promoted ; when you come to 
read the history of the struggles of oui- forefathers, by 
which those sacred laws have, from time to time, been 
defended against despotic ambition ; by which they have 
been restored to vigor when on the eve of perishing ; by 
which their violators have never failed, in the end, to be 
made to feel the just vengeance of the people ; when you 
come to read the history of these struggles in the cause 
of freedom, you will find that tyranny has no enemy so 
formidable as the pen. And, while you will see with exulta- 
tion the long-imprisoned, the heavily-fined, the banished 
Wilham Prynne, returning to hberty, borne by the people 
from Southampton to London, over a road strewed with 
flowers ; then accusing, bringing to trial, and to the block, 
the tyrants from whose hands he and his country had un- 
justly and cruelly suffered; while your heart and the 
heart of every young man in the kingdom will bound with 
joy at the spectacle, you ought all to bear in mind that, 
without a knowledge of grammar., ]\fr. Prynne could never 
have performed any of those acts by which his name has 



Introduction. 7 

been thus preserved, and which have caused his memory 
to be held in honor. 

Though I have now said what, I am sure, will be more 
than sufficient to make you entertain a strong desire to 
take this first step in the road to literaiy knowledge, I 
cannot conclude this introductory letter without observ- 
ing, that you ought to proceed in yom* study, not only 
with diligence, but with patience; that, if you meet with 
difficulties, you should beai* in mind that, to enjoy the 
noble prospect from Port's-Down Hill, you had fii'st to 
cHmb slowly to the top; and ifhat, if those difficulties 
gather about you and impede yoiu- way, you have only to 
call to yoiu' recollection any one of the many days that 
you have toiled thi'ough briers and brambles and bogs, 
cheered and tu-ged on by the hope of at last finding and 
killing yoiu- game. 

I have put my work into the form of Letters, in order 
that I might be continually reminded that I was address- 
ing myself to persons who needed to be spoken to with 
gi'eat clearness. I have numbered the Letters themselves, 
and also the 'paragraphs, in order that I might be able, in 
some pai'ts of the work, to refer you to, or tell you where 
to look at, other parts of the work. And here I will just 
add, that a sentence, used as a term in Grammar, means 
one of those portions of words which are divided from the 
rest by a single dot, which is called a7>e;'io(7, or full point; 
and that a jKiragra2^h means one of those collections, or 
blocks, of sente7ices which are divided from the rest of the 
work by beginning a neio line a '^iile further in than the 
lines in general ; and, of coui'se, all this part, which I have 
just now -wiitten, begimiing with "7" have put my work 
i7ito theforin^^ is 2i paragraph. 

In a confident reliance on yoiu' attentiveness, industry, 
and patience, I have a hope not less confident of seeing 
you a man of real learning, employing yom- time and 
talents in aiding the cause of tnath and justice, in aiford- 



8 Definition of 

ing protection to defenceless innocence, and in drawing 
down vengeance on lawless oppression ; and, in that hope, 
I am your happy, as well as affectionate, father, 

WILLIAM COBBETT. 



LETTER III 

DEFINITION OF GRAMMAR, AND OF ITS DIFFERENT BRANCHES, 
OR PARTS. 

My dear James: 

1. In the foregoing Letter I have laid before you some 
of the inducements to the study of Grammar. In this I 
will define, or describe, the thing called Qratnmar; and 
also its different branches, or Parts. 

2. Grammar, as I observed to you before, teaches us 
how to make use of loords; that is to say, it teaches us how 
to make use of them in a proper manner, as I used to 
teach you how to sow and plant the beds in the garden ; 
for you could have thrown about seeds and stuck in 
plants of some sort or other, in some way or other, without 
any teaching of mine ; and so can anybody, without rules 
or instructions, put masses of words upon paper ; but to 
be able to choose the words which ought to be employed, 
and to place them where they ought to be placed, we must 
become acquainted with certain principles and rules; 
and these principles and rules constitute what is called 
Grammar. 

3. Nor must you suppose, by-and-by, when you come 
to read about JV^ouns and Verbs and -Pronou7is, that all 
this tends to nothing but mere ornamental learning ; that 
it is not altogether necessary, and that people may write 
to be understood very well without it. This is not the 
case; for, without a good deal of knowledge relative to 
these same Nouns and Yerbs, those who write are never 



Orammar and its Brmiches. 9 

sui'e that they put upon paper what they mean to put 
upon paper. I shall, before the close of these Letters, show 
you that even very leai'ned men have frequently wiitten, 
and caused to be pubHshed, not only what they did not 
mean, but the very contrary of what they meant ; and if 
errors, such as are here spoken of, ai'e sometimes com- 
mitted by learned men, into what endless errors must 
those fall who have no knowledge of any principles or 
rules, by the observance of which the like may be avoided ! 
Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to 
express oui* meaning fully and clearly, but so to express 
it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to 
ovu' words any other meaning than that which we ourselves 
intend them to express. This, therefore, is a science of 
substantial utihty. 

4. As to the different Branches or Parts of Grammar, 
they are _^/l»«//7 and they are thus named: Orthography, 
Prosody, Etymology, and Syntax. 

5. There are two of these branches on which we have 
very little to say, and the names of which have been kej^t 
in use from an unwillingness to give up the practice of 
former times ; but, as it is usual to give them a place in 
books of this kind, I will explain to you the natui'e of all 
the four branches. 

G. ORTHOGRAPHY is a word made up of two Greek 
words, which mean s^Mlling. The use of foreign words, 
in this manner, was introduced at the time when the 
English language was in a very barbarous state; and, 
though this use has been continued, it ought to be a rule 
with you, always, when you either write or speak, to avoid 
the use of any foreign or uncommon word, if you can ex- 
press yoiu" meaning as fully and clearly by an English word 
in common use. However, Orthography means neither 
more nor less than the very humble business of putting 
letters together properly, so that they shall form words. 
This is so very childish a concern that I will not appear to 
1* 



10 Dejtnition of 

suppose it necessary for me to ^well upon it ; but as you 
will, by-and-by, meet with some directions, under the bead 
of Etymology, in wbich Voioels and Consonants will be 
spoken of, I will here, for form's sake, just observe that 
the letters. A, E, I, O, and U, are l^owels. Y, in certain 
cases, is also a Yowel. All the rest of the letters of the 
alphabet are Consonants. 

This "very humble business" of spelling, however," must not be 
passed over so lightly ; for it is a subject of very great difficulty to 
many pei-sous. It is notorious that many of our ablest English 
authors were never able to spell or punctuate correctly, and that 
the correctness of their printed books, in this respect, is entirely 
owing to the skill of the compositor. Some of their manuscripts 
might, indeed, be very aptly compared to the communication of 
Tom Hood's witty but illiterate correspondent, who, on writing 
him a long letter without any points whatever, jotted them all 
down in a row at the end of his letter, and told him to "pepper 
and salt " as he pleased. It is the compositor that does the ' ' pep- 
pering and salting," and much more, for many a writer of large 
pretensions. 

The orthography of our English words, from their various deri- 
vation and the variety of sounds given to the letters of the alpha- 
bet, is perhaps more difficult than that of the words of any other 
modern tongue; and I wish to indicate here the very best and 
simplest way of learning it, together with the punctuation of the 
sentences — I mean by dictations. It is not necessary to have a 
teacher for this purpose ; anybody who can read correctly can dic- 
tate to you. All you have to do is to write down the words and 
points that are slowly read to you from a book, and when you 
have written about a page, take the printed book and compare 
your words and points with those in the book, and correct accord- 
ingly. This is the cure for all spelling-reform nonsense. Write, 
page after page to dictation, and you will soon find it all come very 
natural — you will wonder how anybody could ever think of spelL 
ing the words otherwise than the way they are spelled, or how 
they could be spelled otherwise. 

The old method — still practiced in our public schools — of giving 
out columns of single and separate words to be spelled, verbally 
and in writing, many of tliem such as may never be seen twice 
again in a lifetime, is of very little value ; for it is disjointed, dry, 
and pointless ; whereas, by dictating sentences from a book, the 



Grammar and its Branches. 11 

scholar learns: tst, to spoil the words in common nse; 2d, to 
spell words according to their meaning (there, their ; hair, hare ; 
pear, pair); 3d, to associate words with ideas, thus instinctively 
and imperceptibly learning their proper meaning and right use ; 
and, 4th, he acquires a. feeling or taate for correct language ; words 
and sentences are impressed forcibly ou his mind by hearing, 
seeing, and writing them. Besides, he learns in this way, better 
than in any other, a knowledge of punctuation, which in English 
is different with different writers ; in fact, every English writer 
has his own style of punctuating, for this is generally a matter of 
taste and feeling. In writing to dictation, the work done by the 
scholar is nearly the same as that done by the compositor, who is 
the best speller and punctuator in the world. Therefore, get 
somebody to dictate to you eveiy day a page, or half a page, from 
a book, and you will, in a few months, acquire a better knowledge 
of orthography and punctuation than if 3'ou had spelled your way 
through a dozen spelling-books. 

7. PROSODY is a -word taken from tlie Greek lan- 
guage, and it means not so mucli as is expressed by the 
more common word PRONUNCIATION ; that is to say, 
the business of using the proper sound, and employing 
the due length of time, in the uttering of syllables and 
words. This is a matter, however, which ought not to 
occupy much of yovu' attention, because pronunciation is 
learned as bu'ds leai'n to chirp and sing. In some counties 
of England many words are pronounced in a manner dif- 
ferent from that in -which they are pronounced in other 
counties ; and between the pronunciation of Scotland and 
that of Hampshu'e the difference is vei'y great indeed. 
But, while all inquuies into the causes of these differences 
are useless, and all attempts to remove them ai-e vain, the. 
differences are of very Httle.real consequence. For in- 
stance, though the Scotch say coorn, the Londoners cavm^ 
and the Hamjishire folks cam, we know they all meayi to 
say corn. Children will pronounce as theii- fathers and 
mothers pronounce; and if, in common conversation, or 
in speeches, the matter be good and judiciously arranged, 
the facts cleai'ly stated, the ai'guments conclusive, the 



12 Definition of 

words well chosen and properly placed, hearers whose 
approbation is worth having will pay very little attention 
to the accent. In short, it is sense, and not sound, which 
is the object of your pursuit ; and, therefore, I have said 
enough about Prosody. 

Here is a circumstance that suggests a by no means unfavorable 
commentary on the difference between the pronunciation of Eng- 
lisli in tliis country and in England : Mr. James Paul Cobbett, son 
of William Cobbett, has added to a late edition of this grammar, a 
sixteen-page chapter on pronunciation, pointing out the various 
classes of words commonly mispronounced by classes and counties 
of people in England. After carefully noting them all, I have come 
to the conclusion that the whole batch is utterly useless for our 
people, as I do not know of a single class of people in this country 
who make any one of the same mispronunciations. Many of the 
mistakes are, it is true, made here, too ; as, bood for bud ; doon 
for done ; aboove for above ; f ayther for father ; awch for arch ; 
glawss for glass ; but they are not made by classes of people ; they 
are, in fact, made by none but a few illiterate and pretentious 
people. 

The most common mistake made by people in this country con- 
sists in misplacing the accent of words ; as, in-dus'-try for in'-dus- 
try ; in-ter-est'-ing for in'-ter-est-ing. All these may be corrected 
by reference to the dictionary, in which the pronunciation of every 
word is properly marked. The stress of the voice always falls on 
that syllable having the accent-mark (') ; thus, per'-emp-to-ry, not 
per-emp'to-ry. I have read somewhere that, on one occasion, 
when Mr. Sumner's colleague in the Senate said he hoped that the 
honorable gentlemen would make an inquiry into some matter, 
Mr. Sumner whispered to him : " inqui'ry." 

By-the-bye, there is one other mistake in pronunciation, which 
is very common among Americans, in the Eastern States at least, 
and that is pronouncing such words as new, dew, steio, as if they 
were written noo, doo, stoo. They must be pronounced like few 
and view. The same error is made in such words as duty, grati- 
tude, where the u must be long, as in useful. 

There is something else that usually comes under this heading. 
The Greek word prosodia means, literally, "belonging to song 
or hymn," and is usually employed to signify that part of gram- 
mar which treats of the rules of rhythm in metrical composi- 
tions. Cobbett, it is well known, had very little admiration for 



Gninintar and its Branches. 13 

poetry, and no dovibt considered it a waste of tiTiic to say anything 
about its laws ; but, thougli perhaps not one in a hundred of tiiose 
who study tiiis book will ever attempt to write poetry, every intel- 
ligent person ought to knom something of its laws ; and I shall, 
therefore, at the end of the book, after more necessaiy mat- 
ters have been mastered, attempt to show what a simple matter 
this is, as far as English is concerned. 

8. ET Y^IOLOGY is a very different matter ; and, under 
this head, you will enter on your study. This is a word 
which has been formed out of two Greek words ; and it 
means the /)e^?/f//-ee or rdat'ionshlp ofv'ords, or, the man- 
ner in which one word grows out of, or comes from, 
another word. For instance, the word walk expresses an 
action, or movement, of our legs ; but, in some cases we 
say tcalks, in others walked, in others loalking. These 
three latter words are all different from each other, and 
they all differ from the original word, walk; but the 
action or movement, expressed by each of the foui", is 
precisely the same sort of action or movement, and the 
three latter words grow out of, or come fi'om, the first. 
The words here mentioned differ fi-om each other with 
regard to the letters of w^hich they are composed. The 
difference is made in order to express differences as to the 
Persons who walk, as to the Number of persons, as to the 
Time of walkuig. You will come, by-and-by, to the prin- 
ciples and rules according to which the varying of the 
spelling of words is made to con-espond with these and 
other differences; and these principles and rules consti- 
tute what is called lityuiology. 

9. SYNTAX. is a word which comes from the Greek. 
It means, in that language, the joining of several things 
together; and, as used by grammai'ians, it means those 
principles and rules which teach us how to put words 
together so as to form sentences. It means, in short, sen- 
tence-making. Having been taught by the rules of JEtg- 
niologg what ai'e the relationships of woi'ds, how words 
grow out of each other, how they are varied in their 



14 Definition of Grammar, etc. 

letters in order to correspond with the variation in the 
circumstances to which they apply, Syntax will teach you 
how to give all your words their proper situations or 
places, when you come to put them together into sen- 
tences. And here you will have to do with points as well 
as with words. The points are four in number, the 
Comma, the Semi- Colon, the Colon, and the Period. 
Besides these points, there are certain tnarks, such as the 
mark of interrogation, for instance; and to use these 
points and marks properly is, as you will by-and-by find, 
a matter of very great importance. 

10. I have now given you a description of Grammar, 
and of its separate Branches or Parts. I have shown you 
that the first two of these Branches inay be dismissed 
without any further notice ; but very different indeed is 
the case with regard to the latter two. Each of these 
will require several Letters ; and these Letters will contain 
matter which it will be impossible to understand without 
the greatest attention. You must read soberly and slowly, 
and you must thinlc as you read. You must not hurry 
on from one Letter to another, as if you were reading a 
history ; but you must have patience to get, if possible, at 
a clear comprehension of one part of the subject before 
you proceed to another part. When I was studying the 
French language, the manner in which I proceeded was 
this: when I had attentively read over, three times, a 
lesson, or other division of my Grammar, I wrote the 
lesson down upon a loose sheet of paper. Then I read it 
again several times in my own hand-writing. Then I 
copied it, in a very plain hand, and without a blot, into a 
book, which I had made for the purpose. But if, in writ- 
ing my lesson down on a loose sheet of paper, I commit- 
ted one single error, however trifling, I used to tear the 
paper, and write the whole down again ; and, frequently, 
this occurred three or four times in the writing, down of 
one lesson. I, at first, found this labor very irksome; 



Parts of Speech. 15 

but, haA-ing imposed it on myself as a duty, I faithfully 
dischai-ged that duty ; and, loug before I had proceeded 
half way through my Grammar', I experienced all the 
benefits of my industry and perseverance. 

This was, no doubt, how Cobbett, in his soldier days, learned to 
spell and punctuate ; for what he did was as good as writing so 
many dictations. If any scholar feels like following his example, 
he may lighten the labor and secure nearly equal benefit by writ- 
ins the lessons down as dictations. 



LETTER III. 

ETYMOLOGY. 

The different J^arts of Speech, or Sorts of Words. 

My deab James: 

11. In the second Letter I have given you a description 
of Etymology, and shown you that it treats of the pedi- 
gree, or relationship, of words, of the nature of which re- 
lationship I have given you a specimen in the word vjalk. 
The next thing is to teach you the principles and rides,' 
according to which the spelhng and employing of words 
are vaiied in order to exjjress the various cu-cumstances 
attending this relationship. But, before I enter on this 
pai't of my instructions, I must inform you that there are 
several disti7ict sorts of words, or, as they are usually 
called, Farts of Speech; and it will be necessary for you 
to be able, before you proceed fui'ther, to distinguish the 
words belonging to each of these Pai'ts of Speech from 
those belongmg to the other parts. There ai'e Nine 
Parts of Speech, and they are named thus: 

AKTICLES, NOUNS, 

PRONOUNS, ADJECTIVES, 

VERBS, ADVERBS, 

PREPOSITIONS, . CONJUNCTIONS. 
INTERJECTIONS. 



16 Etymology. 

12. Before tlie sergeant begins to teach young soldiers 
their exercise of the musket, he explains to them the dif- 
ferent parts of it; the butt, the stock, the barrel, the 
loops, the swivels, and so on ; because, unless they know 
these by their names, they cannot know how to obey his 
instructions in the handling of the musket. Sailors, for 
the same reason, are told which is the tiller, which are the 
yards, which the shrouds, which the tacks, which the 
sheets, which the booms, and which are each and every 
part of the ship. Apprentices are taught the names of all 
the tools used in their trade ; and ploughboys the names 
of the various implements of husbandry. This species of 
preliminary knowledge is absolutely necessary in all these 
callings of life ; but not more necessary than it is for you 
to learn, before you go any further, hoW to knoto the sorts 
ofioords onefro'm another. To teach you this, therefore, 
is the object of the present letter. 

13. ARTICLES. There are but three in our language ; 
and these are, the, a?i, and a. Indeed, there are but two, 
because a7i and a are the same word, the latter being 
only an abbreviation, or a shortening, of the former. I 
shall, by-and-by, give you rules for the using of these 
Ai'ticles ; but my business in this place is only to teach 
you how to know one sort of words from another sort of 
words. 

14. NOUNS. The word Noun means name, and 
nothing more ; and Nouns are the immnes of persons and 
things. As far as jDgrsons and other animals and things 
that we can see go, it is very easy to distinguish Nouns; 
but there are many Nouns which express what we can 
neither see, nor hear, nor touch. For example: Con- 
science, Vanity, Vice, Sobriety, Steadiness, Valour; and 
a great number of others. Grammarians, anxious to give 
some easy rule by which the scholar might distinguish 
Nouns from other words, have directed him to put the 
words, the good, before any word, and have told him that, 



J'c/rts of Speech. 17 

if the tlu-ee words make sense, tlie last word is a JVbuji. 
This is frequently the case; as, the good house, the good 
dog/ but the good sobriety would not appear to be very 
f/ood sense. In fact there is no rule of this kind that will 
answer the purpose. You must employ yoiu* mind in 
order to arrive at the knowledge here desii'ed. 

15. Every word which stands for a person or any ani- 
mal, or for any thing of sicbstance, dead or alive, is a 
JV^ou7i. So far the matter is very easy. Thus, ma7i, cat, 
tree, log, axe Nouns. But when we come to the woi'ds 
which ai'e the names of things, and which things are not 
std)sta7ices, the matter is not so easy, and it requii-es a 
little sober thought. This word thought, for example, is 
a jVoim,. 

16. The only sure rule is this : that a word which stands 
for any thing that has an, existence is a Noun. For ex- 
ample: Pride, Folly, Thought, Misery, Truth, JAdse- 
hood, Ojyinion, Sentiment. None of these have any sub- 
stance. You cannot see them, or touch them; but they 
all have an existence. They all exist in the world ; and, 
therefore, the words which represent them, or stand for 
them, ai'e called Nouns. If you be still a little puzzled 
here, you must not be impatient. You will find the diffi- 
culty disappear in a short time, if you exert yotu* powers 
of thinking. Ask yourself what existence means. You 
will find that the words, very, for, think, but, pretty, do 
not express any thing which has an existence, or a being; 
but that the words, motive, zeal, pity, kindness, do ex- 
press thmgs which have a being, or existence. 

17. PRONOUNS. Words of this sort stand in the 
place of Nouns. Theu- name is from the Latin, and it 
means For-nouns, or For-nanies; that is to say, these 
words, called Pronoims, are used/'or, or instead of. Nouns. 
y/e, iShe, Her, Him, Who, for example, are Pronouns. 
The use of them is to prevent the repetition of Nouns, 
and to make spcakuig and writing more rapid and less 



18 Etymology. 

encumbered with words. An example will make this clear 
to you in a minute. Thus : 

18. A woman went to a man, and told hmx that he was 
in great danger of being mui'dered by a gang of robbers, 
?oAo had made preparations for attacking him. He 
thanked her for her kindness, and, as he was unable to de- 
fend himself, he left his house and went to a neighbor's. 

19. Now, if there were no Pronouns, this sentence must 
be written as follows : — A woman went to a man, and told 
the man, that the man was in great danger of being miu'- 
dered by a gang of robbers ; as a gang of rohhers had 
made preparations for attacking the man. The mail 
thanked the v)oman for the woman's kindness ; and as the 
man was unable to defend the 7nan's self, the man left 
the mavbs house and went to a neighbor's. 

20. There are several different classes of Pronouns; 
but of this, and of the manner of using Pronouns, you 
will be informed by-and-by. All that I aim at here is to 
enable you to form a clear idea with regard to the differ- 
ence in the sorts of words, or Parts of Speech. 

21. ADJECTIVES. The word Adjective, in its full, 
literal sense, means something added to something else. 
Therefore, this term is used in Grammar as the name of 
that Part of Speech which consists of words which are 
added, or put, to Nouns, in order to express something 
relating to the Nouns, which something could not be ex- 
pressed without the help of Adjectives. For instance, 
there are several turkeys in the yard, some black, some 
white, some speckled ; and, then, there are large ones and 
small ones of all the colours. I want you to go and catch 
a turkey; but I also want you to catch a white turkey, 
and not only a white turkey, but a large ttu'key. There- 
fore, I add, ox put to the Noun, the words white and large, 
which, therefore, are called Adjectives. 

22. Adjectives sometimes express the qualities of the 
Nouns, to which they are put; and this being very fre- 



rnHs <»/ speech. 19 

quently tlieii' use, some grammarians have thrown aside 
the word Adjectives, and have called words of this sort. 
Qualities. But this name is 2iot sufficiently comprehen- 
sive; for there are many words which ai'e Adjectives 
which have nothing to do with the quality of the Nouns 
to which they ai'e put. Good and bad express qualities, 
but lovy and short merely express dimension, or dvu'ation, 
without giving any intimation as to the quality of the 
things expressed by the Noims to which they are put ; 
and yet loxj and short are Adjectives. You must read 
veiy attentively here, and consider s»berly. You must 
keep in mind the above explanation of the meaning of the 
word Adjective; and if you also bear in mind that words 
of this sort always express some quality, some property, 
some appearance, or some distinctive circumstance, be- 
longing to the Nouns to which they are put, you will very 
easily, and in a very short space of time, be able to dis- 
tinguish an Adjective from words belonging to any other 
Part of Speech. 

23. VERBS. Grammarians appeal' to have been at a 
loss to discover a suitable appellation for this important 
sort of words, or Pai't of Speech; for the word Verb 
means nothing more than Word. In the Latin it is 
verbuin, in the French it is verbe; and the French, in 
their Bible, say JLe Yerbe, where we say 2^he Word. The 
truth is that there are so many properties and ckcum- 
stances, so many and such different powers and functions, 
belonging to this Part of Speech, that the mind of man is 
imable to bring the whole of them into any short and pre- 
cise description. The first grammar that I ever looked 
into told me that "a Verb is a word which signifies to do, 
to be, or to suffer.''^ What was I to understand from this 
laconic account ? 

24. Verbs express all the difierent actions and 7/iove- 
nients of all creatures and of all things, whether alive or 
dead. As, for instance, to speak, to bark, to f/row, to 



20 Etymology. 

•moulder, to crack, to crumble, and the like. In all tliese 
cases there is m,ovement clearly understood. But in the 
cases of, to think, to reflect, to remember, to like, to detest, 
and in an infinite number of cases, the tnovement is not so 
easily perceived. Yet these are all yerhs, and they do 
indeed express movements which we attribute to the mind, 
or the heart. But what shall we say in the cases of to sit, 
to sleep, to rot, and the like? Still these are all Verbs. 

25. Verbs are, then, a sort of words, the use of which 
is to express the actiotis, the movem,ents, and the state or 
manner of being, of all creatures and things, whether ani- 
mate or inanimate. In speaking with reference to a man, 
to fight is an action ; to reflect is a movement ; to sit is a 
state of being. 

26. Of the manner of using Verbs you will hear a great 
deal by-and-by; but what I have here said will, if you 
read attentively, and take time to consider, be sufficient 
to enable you to distinguish Verbs from the words which 
belong to the other Parts of Speech. 

^ 27. ADVEEBS are so called because the words which 
belong to this Part of Speech are added to verbs. But 
this is an inadequate description ; for, as you will pres- 
ently see, they are sometimes otherwise employed. You 
have seen that Verbs express actions, tnovements, and 
states of being; and it is very frequently the use of Ad- 
verbs to express the manner of actions, movements, and 
states of being. Thus : the man fights bravely; he reflects 
profoundly; he sits quietly. In these instances the Ad- 
verbs perform an office, and are placed in a situation, 
which fully justify the name that has been given to this 
sort of words. But there are many Adverbs which do not 
express the manner of actions, movements, or states of 
being, and which are not added to verbs. For instance : 
" When you sow small seeds, make the earth ve7-y fine, 
and if it have, of late, been dry weather, take care to 
press the earth extremely hard upon the seeds." Here 



jHarts of /Speech. 21 

ai'e fom* Adverbs, but only the last of the foiir expresses 
any thing connected with a verb. This shows that the 
name of this class of words does not fully convey to oiu- 
minds a desciiption of their use. 

28. However, with this name you must be content; 
but you must bear in mind that there are Adverbs of 
time, of place, and of degree, as well as of manner ; and 
that then- business is to express, or describe, some circum- 
stances in addition to all that is expressed by the Nouns, 
Adjectives, and Verbs. In the above sentence, for ex- 
ample, the words when, very, of late, and extremely, add 
greatly to the precept, which, without them, would lose 
much of its force. 

29. PKEPOSITIONS. The Prepositions ai-e, in, to, 
for, from, of, by, loith, into, against, at, and several others. 
They are called Prepositions from two Latin words, mean- 
ing before and place; and this name is given them be- 
cause they ai"e in most cases placed before Nouns and 
Pronouns ; as, " Indian corn is sown in May. In June, 
and the three following months, it is carefully cultivated. 
"WTien ripe, in October, it is gathered in the field, by men 
who go from hill to hill vnth baskets, into which they put 
the eai's. The leaves and stalks are then collected for 
winter use ; and they not only serve as food for cattle 
and sheep, but are excellent in the making of sheds to 
protect animals against the inclemency o/*the weather." 

30. Prepositions ai'e not very numerous, and, though 
you will be taught to be very careful in using them, the 
above sentence will be quite sufficient to enable you to 
know the words belonging to this Part of Sj^eech from 
the words belonging to any other Part of Speech. 

Notice that the word is from "prae," before, and "positio," 
a placing. Now take any article of furniture near you — the 
desk, for instance — and think of all the relatiuns of position with 
regard to it and something else. The book is in the desk, on the 
desk, over the desk, above, under, beneath or beloto the desk, nea/r 



22 Etymology. 

the desk, against the desk, beside the desk, witUn or without the 
desk, and so on. ■Still, other relations are sometimes expressed 
hy prepositions as well as that of position ; as, by the desk, of the 
desk, to the desk, for the desk ; but the majority of them show 
some relation of position between things and actions, or between 
persons and actions, or between things and states. This word 
between, for instance, is a preposition. Like other words used in 
grammar, its name, preposition, does not express completely the true 
nature of it. 

31. CONJUNCTIONS are so called because they con- 
join, or join together, words, or parts of sentences ; as, 
"Peas and beans may be severed from the ground before 
they be quite dry ; but they must not be put into sacks or 
barns until perfectly dry, for, if they be, they will mould." 
The word and joins together the words peas and beans, 
and, by the means of this junction, makes all the remain- 
ing part of the sentence apply to both. The word hiit 
connects the first with the second member of the sen- 
tence. The word /or, which is sometimes a Conjunction, 
performs, in this case, the same office as the word hut : it 
continues the connection ; and thus does every part of the 
sentence apply to each of the two nouns which are the 
subject of it. 

What a deal of useless learning we find in the ordinary gram- 
mars about this simple matter of conjunctions! They speak of 
conjunctions which are mere connectives, of co-ordinate and sub- 
ordinate connectives, of copulative, adversative, and alternative 
conjunctions ; then of subordinate connectives which join hetero- 
geneous elements, and these subordinate connectives again divided 
into those which unite substantive clauses, those which unite 
adjective claiises, and those which unite adverbial clauses ! "What 
are children to make of all these hard words ? Or, supposing they 
are made to understand the words, will it enable them to use the 
word and, for instance, more correctly by informing them that it 
is a copulative conjunction ? 

32. INTEEJECTIONS. This name comes from two 
Latin words : inter, which means betvjeen, and jectio, which 
means something thrown. So that the full, literal mean- 



Parts of Speerh. 23 

ing of the wonl is somethutf/ thrown betwee)i. The Inter- 
jections are ^Ih/ Oh! Alas! and such like, which, in- 
deed, are not irords, because they have no definite meaning. 
They are mere sounds, and they have been mentioned by 
me merely because other grammaiians have considered 
them as being a Pai-t of Speech. But this one notice of 
them A\-ill be quite sufficient. 

Here Cobbett's defective knowledge of Latin crops out, for Jectio 
(jacio) does not mean soinetliing thrawn, but merely to throw. But 
he is quite right in setting down interjections as forming no part 
of grammar. A Avriter in Chambers's Encyclopedia hits the mark 
still more effect ively when lie says that "they are, in fact, more 
ukin to the sounds emitted by the lower animals than to articulate 
speech." Yet most grammarians take the trouble to set them 
down in classes, those that express surprise, those that express 
fear, and so on ; as if the veriest boor that ever hopped over a clod 
would not know how to utter an exclamation expressing fear or 
surprise when he felt it! It is something very much like the 
Irishman's "teaching ducks to swim." 

33. Thus, then, you are now able to distinguish, in 
many cases at least, to what Pai't of Speech belongs each 
of the several words which may come under your observa- 
tion. I shall now proceed to the Etymology of each of 
these Pai'ts of Speech. As we have done with the Inter- 
jections, there will remain only eight Pai'ts to treat of, 
and this I shall do in eight Letters, allotting one Letter 
to each Part of Speech. 

Here it seems proper to say to the thoughtful scholar that a word 
may (as remarked by Mr. White) belong to almost any part of 
speech, according to its use. We say dog is a noun ; and so it is 
when it means an animal of the dog species ; but it may be a verb 
or an adjective ; as, he will dog me to my home ; here is a dog cart. 
In tins very phrase, "dog species," it is an adjective. Take, 
again, the word but. I will give it to you of four different parts 
of speech in four different senses. "I will go, hut I will return. 
He is but five years old. Tiie goat will but his head against you. 
He always has a but in his sayings." And the word could no 
doubt be used in still other parts of speech. If you cannot make 
these out now, wait a little; you will be able to do so by-and-by. 



24 JStymology 

Spelled with two t's, there are three different butts, with three 
different meanings ; the butt of ridicule, the butt of a segar, the 
butt of wine. Then, again, a word may be of two different parts 
of speech with a different accent, as, I re-cord' the deed ; this is the 
rec'-ord. You see, therefore, every thing depends on the sense or 
the use made of a word ; and you see, too, the utter uselessness of 
learning by heart instead of by reason. In learning any art or 
science, an ounce of understanding is worth a ton of memory. 



LETTER IV. 

etymology of articles. 

My dear James: 

34. In Letter III., paragraph 13, you have seen what 
sort of words Articles are ; that is to say, you have there 
learned how to distinguish the words belonging to this 
Part of Speech from words belonging to other Parts of 
Speech. You must now turn to Letter II., paragraph 8. 
Having read what you find there under the head of JEty- 
mology, you will see at once, that my business, in this 
present Letter, is to teach you those principles and rules 
according to which Articles are varied in order to make 
them suit the different circumstances which they are used 
to express. 

35. You have seen that there are but three Articles, 
namely, A or AN, and THE. The two former are, in fact, 
the same word, but of this I shall say more presently. 
They are called indefinite Articles, because they do not 
define, or determine, what particular object is spoken of. 
The Nouns, to which they are prefixed, only serve to poiat 
out the sort of person or thiag spoken of, without defin- 
ing what person or what thing ; as, a tree is Mowed down. 
From this we learn that some tree is blowed down, but 
not what tree. But the definite Article THE determines 
the particular object of which we speak ; as, the tree which 



Of Articles. 25 

stood close beside the bar 71 is blowed down. In this last 
instance, we are not only informed that a tree is blowed 
down, but the sentence also informs us what particulai* 
tree it is. This Ai'ticle is used before noims in the plural 
as well as before nouns in the singvdar number. It is 
sometimes used before words expressive of degrees of 
comparison ; as, the best, the toorst, the highest, the lotcest. 
When we use a noun in the singular number to express a 
whole species, or sort, we use the definite Article ; thus, 
we say, the oak is a fine tree, when we mean that oaks are 
fine trees. 

36. The Article A becomes AN when this Article comes 
immediately before any word which begins with a voxoel. 
This is for the sake of the sound, as an adder, an elephant, 
an huh, an oily seed, an ugly hat. The word an is also 
used before words which begin with an h which is mute ; 
that is to say, which, though used in wi'itmg, is not 
sounded in speaking ; as, an hour. This little variation in 
the article is, as I said before, for the sake of the sound; 
for it would be veiy disagreeable to say, a adder, a ele- 
2^hant, a inch, a oily seed, a ugly hat, a hour, and the 
like. But a is used in the usual way before words which 
begin with an h which is sounded in speaking ; as, a horse, 
a hair, and the like. The indefinite Ai'ticle can be used 
before nouns in the singular number only. There is a 
seeming exception to this rule in cases where the words 
fe^o and many come before the noun; as, a/ew horses; a 
great many horses ; but, in reality, this is not an excep- 
tion, because the words feio and many mean nutnber / 
thus, a small mimber of horses, a great number of horses; 
and the indefinite Article agrees with this word number, 
which is understood, and wliich is in the singular. 

It is remarkable that a man of Cobbetl's discernment did not see 
through a certain inconsistency in tlie strict or literal application 
of this rule, llie more especially as he explicitly declares tliat the 
change is made for tlie sake of the sound. lie, like u thousand 

2 



26 Etymology 

others to the present day, followed out the letter of the rule and 
violated its spirit. For a word may begin with a vowel and yet 
have a consonant sound; and in this case the article must not be 
changed. Does it not sound much better to say, "a useful book," 
than "an useful book?" "such a one," than "such an one?" And 
it will be seen that when we say a useful hook, a one, a union, a 
ewe, a European, and the like, we really conform to the spirit of 
the rule ; for in all these cases the words begin with the SOUND 
of a consonant ; as, a yuseful book, a wone, a yunion, a yewe, a 
yeuropean. 

And this also clearly illustrates something else that has been left 
mysteriously indefinite in many grammars : ' ' The vowels are a, e, 
i, o, u, and sometimes w and y." What a puzzle this used to be to 
me in my grammar-studying days! There was the rule, plain 
enough; but loJien w and y were consonants, I knew no more 
than the man in the moon ! I suppose that these writers of gram- 
mars repeat this rule, one after another, without knowing anything 
about it themselves. Now the rea;son here given why the indefinite 
article must remain unchanged before words beginning with a 
vowel and having & y or w sound, explains the whole matter; 
namely, that y and w at the BEGiNNisa of a syllable are consonants 
but in the middle or at the end of a syllable are vowels. In the 
word sympathy, for instance, both y^s are vowels, because they are 
equal to i's; in the word yesterday, the first is a consonant, and the 
second a vowel. It is precisely the same with the w; in the words 
neto, few, pew, the w''s are vowels, being equal to u''s; in the 
word window, the first is a consonant and the second a vowel. 

But there is another rule concerning words beginning with h, a 
rule of which Cobbett and many other writers of his day seem to 
have been unaware — although I have no doubt they unconsciously 
obeyed it — which is also formed for the sake of the sound. In these 
four words, for instance, Mstoi'y, historical, hero, heroic, the h is uni- 
formly sounded, or aspirated. Yet we say an historical fact, an 
heroic poem, a history, a hero. How does this come ? It is because 
we must say an before words beginning with h aspirate, when the 
accent of such words falls on the second syllable. That is the rule. 
Say, therefore, an hotel, an hereditary prince, and not, as many do, 
a hotel, a liereditary prince; for the former sounds better. 

I may here add that the tendency now-a-days is to sound the h 
in some words in which it was formerly silent : a humble man, 
a hospital, a hostler. I suppose Dickens's Uriah Heep has made 
most people disgusted with "an 'umble man." And it is perhaps 



Of Nouns. 27 

worth remarking here that many Americans make a serious 
mistake when they believe that all Englishmen drop their ailches, 
and put them in where they ought not to do so. The latter is 
never done by auybody in England but illiterate Londoners, and 
the former seldom by Englishmen of any culture. 

I notice that recent grammarians follow Noah Webster in setting 
down articles as adjectives. It is true that these words always 
modify nouns in some way ; but I see no advantage in setting them 
down among a class of words which generally signify the kind or 
quality of things, tlms rendering the adjective itself all the more 
difficult to define. Besides, the articles have characteristics en- 
tirely their own, wliich can be remembered the better by keeping 
them apart. We shall see this more clearly by-and-by. 



LETTER V. 

ETYMOLOGY OF NOUNS. 

37. This, my dear James, is a Letter of great import- 
ance, and, therefore, it will require great attention from 
you. Before you proceed fm-ther, you will again look 
well at Letter 11., pai-agraph 8, and Letter m., para- 
graphs 14, 15, and 16, and there read carefully everything 
under the head of Nouns. 

38. Now, then, as Letter III. has taught you how to 
distinguish Nouns from the Avords which belong to the 
other Pai'ts of Speech, the business here is to teach you 
the principles and rules according to which Nouns are to 
be varied in the letters of which they are composed, ac- 
cording to which they ai'e to be used, and according to 
which they ai'e to be considered in theii- beai'ings upon 
other words in the sentences in which they are used. 

39. In a Noun there are to be considered the branches, 
the numbers, the yenders, and the cases; and all these 
must be attended to very carefully. 

40. THE BllANCHES. There aie two ; for Nouns are 



28 Etymology 

some of them proper and some common. A Noun is called 
proper when it is used to distinguish one particular indi- 
vidual from the rest of the individuals of the same species 
or kind; as James, JBotley, Uam^pshire. The Noun is 
called com,mon when it appHes to all the individuals of a 
kind ; as, man, milage, county. JBotley is a proper Noun, 
because all villages have not this name ; but village is a 
common noun, because all villages are called by that 
name : the name is common to them all. Several persons 
have the name of James, to be sure, and there is a Hamp- 
shire in America as well as in England ; but, still, these 
are proper names, because the former is not common to 
all men, nor the latter to all counties. Proper Nouns 
take no articles before them, because the extent of their 
meaning is clearly pointed out in the word itself. In. fig- 
urative language, of which you will know more by-and-by, 
we sometimes, however, use the article ; as, " Goldsmith 
is a very pretty poet, but not to be compared to the Popes, 
the Drydens, or the Otways." And again; "I wish I had 
the wit of a Swift.'''' We also use the definite article be- 
fore proper Nouns when a common Noun is understood 
to be left out ; as. The Delaware, meaning the River Del- 
aware. Also when we speak of more than one person of 
the same name ; as, the Henries, the Edwards. 

A very important difference in the use of proper and 
common nouns is, that the former are written witli a capital 
letter, and the latter are not. This is the general rule, and it is 
generally observed ; but some writers begin every word they think 
important with a capital letter, and nobody is more peculiar in 
this respect than Cobbett himself. He writes noun, you see, with 
a capital, although it is a common noun. Formerly every noun 
used to be written with a capital letter, as is done in German till 
this day. Thomas Carlyle is another singular punctuator and 
capitalizer ; but he is singular in all things. 

41. THE NUMBEES. These are the Singular and 
the Plural. The Singular is the original word ; and, in 
general, the Plural is formed by adding an s to the singu- 



Of Nouns. 29 

lai', as dog^ do(js. But though the greater part of our 
Nouns form theu- pluials from the smgular in this simple 
manner, there ai"e many which do not; while there are 
some Nouns which have no phu-al number at all, and some 
which have no suigular. Therefore, considering the above 
to be the Fikst Rule, I shall add other rules with regaixl 
to the Nouns which do not follow that Rule. — The Second 
Rule. Nouns, the suigular numbers of which end in cA, 
s, sA, or a.', requh-e es to be added in order to form their 
plru'al number; as, church, churches; brush, brushes; 
lass, lasses / fox, foxes. — The Third Rule is that Nouns 
which end in y, when the y has a consonant coming im- 
mediately before it, change the y into ies in forming then- 
plurals; as, quantity, quantities. But you must mind 
that if the y be not immediately preceded by a consonant, 
the words follow the First Mule, and take only an s in 
addition to their singular ; as, day, days. I am the more 
anxious to guai'd you against error as to this matter, be- 
cause it is very common to see men of high rank and pro- 
fession writing vallies, vollies, attornies, correspondencies, 
convetiiencies, and the like, and yet all these are erroneous. 
Correspondence and inco7ive?iience should have simply an 
sy for they end ia e, and not in y. — The Fourth Rule is, 
that Noims which end in a single /, or in fe, form their 
plm-als by changing the/, orfe, into ves/ as, loaf loaves/ 
xoife, loives. But this rtde has exceptions, in the following 
words, which follow the First Rule : Dwarf scarf, mis- 
chief handkerchief chief relief, grief and others. The 
two last are seldom used in the plural number ; but, as 
they sometimes ai'e, I have included them. — The Fifth 
Rule is, that the following Nouns have their plui-al in en; 
tium, tnen; woman, xoomen ; ox, oxen; child, children. 
And brethren is sometimes used as the plm-al of brother. — 
The Sixth Rule is, that all which nature, or art, or habit, 
has made plural, have no singular ; as, ashes, annals, bel- 
lows, bowels, thanks, breeches, entrails, lungs, scissors. 



30 



Etymology 



snuffers, tongs, wages, and some others. There are also 
some Nouns which have no plurals, such as those which 
express the qualities, or propensities, or feelings, of the 
mind or heart ; as, honesty, meekness, compassion. There 
are, further, several names of herbs, metals, minerals, 
liquids, and of fleshy substances, which have no plurals ; 
to which may be added the names of almost all sorts of 
grain. There are exceptions here; for while wheat has 
no plural, oats has seldom any singular. But all these 
words, and others which are irregular, in a similar way, 
are of such very common use that you will hardly ever 
make a mistake in applying them ; for I will not suppose 
it possible for my dear James to fall into either the com- 
pany or the language of those who talk, and even write, 
about barleys, wheats, clovers, flours, grasses, and malts. 
There remain to be noticed, however, some words which are 
too irregular in the forming of their pliurals to be brought 
under any distinct head even of irregularity. I will, 
therefore, insert these as they are used in both numbers. 



SINGULAR. 


PLUEAL. 


SINGULAR. 


PLURAL. 


Die, 


Dice, 


Goose, 


Geese. 


Mouse, 


Mice, 


Penny, 


Pence, 


Louse, 


Lice, 


Tooth, 


Teeth, 


Deer, 


Deer, 


Foot, 


Feet. 



Die, dice. This is tlie little cubic implement of the gamester ; 
but the more worthy implement of the die-sinker is regular ; die, 
dies. You must not confound this with the dye and dyes of the 
dyer. It is customary to change penny to pence when speaking of 
a sum of money ; but, in speaking of penny-pieces, the word is 
regular ; as, I have a pocketful of pennies. By-the-bye, all such 
words as this word pocketful are also regular; thxee pocketfuls, four 
spoonfuls, five shovelfuls. Three pocketsful would be quite another 
thing. Then again, we must, from the nature of the words, say 
mothers-in-law, cousins-german, courts-martial; for the words in-law, 
german, and martial, are adjectives or qualifyiirg words, and 
adjectives, in English, never make any change to express number. 
Englishman and Frenehman become Englishmen and Frenchmen ; 



Of Nouns. 31 

but not all the nationalities ending in tnan become men; there are 
the Ramans, tlie Normanx, and the Oei-mans, brave manly races, 
no doubt, but who will say that the Mttssv-lmans, Turkomans 
and OttomanH deserve to be called men ? 

Most of the nouns ending in o, add es to form the plural ; as, 
negro, negroes. There are only a few exceptions; as, folio, 
quarto, duodecimo, piano, nuncio, cameo, which follow the general 
rule. I think it useless to clap down every one of the excep- 
tions ; for, in the first place, usage is gradually changing the form 
of some of these words (motto, portico); and, in the second place, 
the reader can always, when necessary, find the desired informa- 
tion by reference to the dictionary. ' ' I always did admire that 
speech!" were the sarcastic words of Mr. Butler in reply to one 
of Mr. Bingham's speeches. I may say the same thing, unsai'casti- 
cally, of the replj^ of a young' candidate for the bar, who, on being 
asked some isolated, unimportant question, said, "I could find 
that out in two minutes by reference to an encyclopedia." 

There are some nouns, with a plural form but a singular mean- 
ing, that are always used in the singular. "The nwlmiies is 
sticky. The measles is spreading. What is the news? He has 
made a sei^ies of blunders. The pains he has taken to repair them 
is remarkable. Mathematics (physics, optics, &c.) is an interesting 
science." Look, therefore, to the meaning and not the form of the 
word. 

Deer, sheep, swine, vermin, are the same in both singular and 
plural ; but snipe, trout, salmon, fish, and the like, become plural 
when number is signified, and singular when quantity is signified. 
"Here are two snipes; I have shot a quantity of snipe. Here are 
three fishes, three salmons ; I have caught a lot of fish, of salmon." 
Dozen &ndpair are used like hundred and thousand; that is, singu- 
lar with an}^ other number, but plural without any olher number. 
"I saw dozens of those creatures; they walked in pairs; I shot five 
dozen partridges and bought six pair of pigeons. Five hundred 
men; there were hundreds of men." 

In some compound nouns, both parts are made plural : man- 
servant, men-servants; woman-servant, women-servants; knight- 
lemplar, knights-templars. To prevent a confusion of things, we 
must add 's to figures and letters to indicate the plural: "I want 
three 5's and four 6's. Mind your p's and q's, and dot your i's." 
There are a number of names of persons and things in war affairs 
that do not make any change for the plural ; as, 
300 fnot (meaning foot-soldiers, or infantry). 



32 Etymology 

400 horse (meaning horse-soldiers, or cavalry). 

100 cannon ; although we also say, many cannons ; a number 
of cannons. 

500 head (of cattle). 

40 yoke of oxen. 

50 sail (meaning ships). 
This is a practice that seems to come from the German language, 
in which words of measure or quantity do not, generally, change 
to indicate plurality. Drei Pfund, zehn FusS; vier Zoll. 

Among proper nouns, the only peculiarity is one concerning 
the young ladies; for in speaking of them, you may give their 
title or their name the sign of the plural ; you may say, the Misses 
Campbell or the Miss Campbells, just as you please. The latter is, 
I think, the more common usage, and the one that is likely to 
prevail ; for it is more natural than the former, and prevents con- 
founding the young ladies with their mamma, Mrs. Campbell. 
(How is it, by-the-way, that most of the children in this country 
say mam'ma and pap' a instead of mam-ma' and pa-pa', which is the 
proper pronunciation?) In addressing people, in conversation, we 
say sir to one person, and gentlemen to several ; miss (or Miss So- 
and-So) to one, and ladies to several. Good morning, sir. Good 
morning, gentlemen. Good morning, miss (or Miss Jennie). 
Good morning, ladies. And here let me throw in, without any 
extra charge, a bit of information for my young reader, which has 
something to do with politeness as well as with grammar ; namely, 
that when you meet two persons in the street, only one of whom 
you know, it is proper for you to address both while saluting 
them : Good morning, gentlemen. 

Just as the girls get Miss, the boys ought to get Master. This, 
however, is more common in England than in this country. There 
the school-boy gets sounder floggings than he does here ; but they 
don't rob him of his title; he is still Master Charles or Master 
Willie, even if he be flogged every day. 

42. THE GENDERS. In the French language, and 
many other languages, every Noun is of the masculine or 
of the feminine gender. Hand, for instance, is of the 
feminine, and arm of the masculine ; pen of the feminine, 
axidipaper of the masculine. This is not the case with our 
language, which, in this respect, has followed the order 
of nature. The names of all males are of the masculine 



Of Nouns. 33 

gender; the names of all^/ewia/e.s" are of the feminine gen- 
der; and all other Nouns ai'e of the neuter (jetider. And 
you must observe that, even in speaking of living crea- 
tures, of which we do not know the gender, we consider 
them to be of the neuter. In strictness of language, we 
could not, perhaps, apply the term gender to things desti- 
tute of all sexual properties ; but, as it is applied with 
perfect propriety in the case of males and females, and as 
the application in the case of inanimate or vegetable mat- 
ter can lead to no grammatical error, I have thought it 
best to follow, in this respect, the example of other gram- 
maiians. It may be said that the rule which I have here 
laid down as being without any exception, has many ex- 
ceptions ; for that, in speaking of a ship., we say she and 
her. And you know our country folks in Hampshu-e call 
almost everything he or she. Sailors have, for ages, called 
their vessels shes., and it has been found easier to adopt 
than to eradicate the vulgarism, which is not only tolerated 
but cherished by that j ust admiration in which owx country 
holds the species of skill and of valor to which it owes 
much of its greatness and renown. It is curious to ob- 
ser\'e that covmtiy laborers give the feminine appellations 
to those things only which ai-e more closely identified 
with themselves, and by the qualities and condition of 
which their own efiforts and thek chai'acter as workmen 
ai'e affected. The mower calls his scythe a she; the 
ploughman calls his plough a she; but a prong, or a 
shovel, or a hai-row, which passes promiscuously from 
hand to hand, and which is appropriated to no pai'ticulai* 
laborer, is called a he. It was, doubtless, from this sort 
of habitual attachment that oui- famous maritime solecism 
ai-ose. The deeds of laborers m the fields and of artizans 
in their shops ai'e not of pubhc interest sufiiciently com- 
manding to enable them to break in upon the principles 
of language ; if they were, we should soon have as many hes 
and sfies as the French, or any other nation in the world. 



34 Etymology 

43. WMle, however, I lay down this rule as required 
by strict grammatical correctness, I must not omit to 
observe that the license allowed to figurative language 
enables us to give the masculine or feminine gender to 
inanimate objects. This has justly been regarded as a 
great advantage in our language. We can, whenever 
our subject will justify it, transform into masculine, or 
into feminine, nouns which are, strictly speaking, neuter; 
and thus, by giving the functions of life to inaiiimate 
objects, enliven and elevate our style, and give to our 
expressions great additional dignity and force. 

This is the figure called personification, which may be illustrated 
by such examples as these: " Grim-visaged War hath smoothed 
Ms wrinkled front." '■'■PeoA^e hath her victories no less I'enowned 
than TFar." "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; you can- 
not rob me of free Nature's grace; you cannot shut the win- 
dows of the sky, through which Aurora shows her brightening 
face." Notice that a noun personified is always spelled with a 
capital letter ; and that the noun is made masculine or feminine 
according to its nature. 

Some grammarians speak of a fourth gender, the common 
gender. Nouns that are common to both genders, they call-auch; 
as, friend, parent, cook, slave. But there is really no necessity for 
such a distinction. When I speak of a friend, I certainljLknow 
whether that friend is man or woman, and it is very easy t^let my 
hearer or reader know, too, if necessary. If I do not in^cate it 
by the pronoun, my hearer or reader may assume that the friend is 
man or woman, as he thinks fit ; but he cannot think of him or 
her as both at once. Indeed the gender is usually indicated by the 
context ; that is, by the parts of the discourse preceding and suc- 
ceeding the word in question. I can hardly speak of a person 
without using he or sh£. The Germans generally add in to the 
masculine noun to make it feminine, as, Freund, Freundinn; the 
French generally add e to the masculine form; as, servant, 
servante ; and the only form in English that is regular is adding 
ess to the masculine, or changing its ending into ess; as, mayor, 
mayoress; hunter, huntress; actor, actress; count, countess; 
duke, duchess. As this, however, can be applied to but compar- 
atively few words in our language, we are obliged to make use 
of vai'ious expedients to indicate gender; as, dog-fox, bitch-fox ; 



Of Nouns. 35 

cock-sparrow, hen-sparrow ; he-goat, she-goat; male cook, female 
cook. Generally, however, in speaking of animals, and also of 
infants, the distinction of sex is not observed; that is to say, these 
are usually spoken of in the neuter gender. "What a handsome 
bird it is I Look at that dog ! What a noble creature it is ! Did 
3'ou see the baby? What an interesting child it is!" When we 
speak of any bird or animal distinguished for its boldness, size, or 
other quality peculiar to the male, we usually give it the masculine 
gender, even if its sex is not known. Such are, for instance, the 
horse or steed, the eagle, the condor, the mastiff, the St. Bernard 
or Newfoundland dog, and the like. Of course, all animals are 
personified in fables. 

As tlie words male 'xwA. female carry a rather animalish significance 
with them, we sometimes say a lady-friend, a gentleman-rider, a 
hoy-singer. Somebody has observed that the words over the 
public-school entrances, "Entrance Sov males," "Entrance for 
feniiUes," sound as if they were entrances for so many little he- 
bears and she-bears, and therefore prefers "Entrance for boys," 
"Entrance for girls." It is far better to speak, for instance, of a 
country being governed by a woman than by a female. 

44. THE CASES. The word case, as appHecl to the 
concerns of hfe, has a variety of meanings, or of different 
shades of meaning ; but its general meaning is state of 
things, or state of something. Thus we say, " In that 
case, I agree ynih you." Meaning, " that being the state 
of things, or that being the state of the matter, I agi'ee 
with you." Lawyers ai'e said "to make out their case ; 
or not to make out their case/'' meaning the state of the 
matter which they have undertaken to prove. So, when 
we say that a horse is in good case, we mean that he is in 
a good state. Novms may be in different states, or situa- 
tions, as to other Nouns, or other words. For instance, 
a Noun may be the name of a person who strikes a horse, 
or of a person -who possesses a horse, or of a person whom 
a horse kicks. And these different situations, or states, 
are, thei'efore, called cases. 

4/3. You will not fully comprehend the use of these 
distinctions till you come to the Letter (m T^er//s ; but it 



36 JEtynioldgy 

is necessary to explain here the nature of these cases, in 
order that you may be prepared well for the use of the 
terms, -when I come to speak of the Verbs. In the Latin 
language each Noun has several different endings, in 
order to denote the different cases in which it may be. 
In our language there is but one of the cases of Nouns 
which is expressed or denoted by a change in the ending 
of the Noun ; and of this change I will speak presently. 

46. There are three Cases : the Nominative, the Pos- 
sessive, and the Objective. A Noun is in the Nominative 
case when it denotes a person, or thing, which does some- 
thing or is something; as, Richard strikes ; Richard is 
good. 

47. A Noun is in the Possessive case when it names a 
person or thing that jsossesses some other person or 
thing, or when there is one of the persons or things he- 
longing to the other; as, Richard'' s hat; the mountain's 
top ; the nation's fleet. Here Richard, mountain, and 
nation, are in the possessive case, because they denote 
persons or things yihioh. possess other persons or things, 
or have other persons or things belonging to them. 
And here is that change in the ending of the Noun, of 
which I spoke above. You see that Richard, mountain, 
nation, has, each of them, an s added to it, and a mark of 
elision over ; that is to say, a coinma, placed above the 
line, between the last letter of the word and the s. This 
is done for the purpose of distinguishing this case from 
the plural number ; or, at least, it answers the purpose in 
all cases where the plural of the Noun would end in an 
s ; though there are different opinions as to the origin of 
its use. In Nouns which do not end their pliu'al in s, the 
mark of elision would not appear to be absolutely neces- 
sary. We might write mans mind, womans heart, but it 
is best to use the mark of elision. When plural Nouns 
end with s, you must not add an s to form the possessive 
case, but put the ehsion mark only after the s which ends 



Of JVouns. 37 

the Noiin ; as, moicntains' tops ; nations' fleets ; lasses' 
charms. Observe, however, that, in every instance, the 
possessive case may be expressed by a turn of the words ; 
as, the hat of Richard ; the top of the mountain^ the 
fleet of the nation ; the mind of man; and so on. The 
Nouns, notwithstanding this turn of the words, are still 
in the possessive case; and, as to when one mode of 
expression is best, and when the other, it is a matter 
which must be left to taste. 

48. A noun is in the Objective case when the person or 
thing that it names or denotes is the object or end of 
some act or of some movement, of some kind or other; 
Richai'd strikes Peter ; Richard gave a blow to Peter ; 
Richard goes after Peter ; Richai'd hates Peter ; Richard 
wants arms ; Richard seeks a/i!erya»iey falsehood leads 
to mischief; oppression produces resistance. Here you 
see that all these Nouns in the objective case are the 
object, the end, or the effect, of something done or felt by 
some person or thing, and wliich other person or thing is 
in the nominative case. 

That is to say, a noun is alawys the object of one of two things, 
tt transitive verb or a preposition. I don't think there is anything 
that enables one to understand this matter of case so well as a proper 
comprehension of the difference between the transitive and the in- 
transitive verb. I know I never understood it until I learned what 
a transitive verb was. — We have seen that verbs are words express- 
mg action or a state of being. Now watch. " I walk in the field ; 
I run every day ; I dream very often ; I live in Hoboken." Here the 
verbs walk, run, dream, live, express an action which does not pass 
from the actor or subject ; it is confined to him ; does not pass 
accr to any thing; it is therefore intransitive. "I walk a luyrse; 
I run 'A grist-mill; I dream bad dreams; I live the lie down." Here 
the action passes from the actor to something else; itgoes over to some- 
tlung; the verb is, therefore, transitive. Now wherever this is the 
case, wherever the action passes to some object, that object or thing 
or noun is in the objective case. Again: " The boy is choking" — 
"the boy is choking the cat." In the first instance, the verb is 
intransitive; in the second, it is transitive, and "cat" is conse- 



38 Etyniology 

quently in the objective case. Besides the transitive verb, there 
is, as I liave said, only one other thing that can put a noun in the 
objective case, and that is the preposition, which always governs the 
objective case, or puts whatever thing follows it in the objective 
case. You notice this in the above examples of Cobbett's •, 
noun each time comes after a transitive verb or a preposition. In 
the examples I gave you with tJie desk (Letter III, par. 29), that 
word is invariably in the objective case. As to the nominative 
case (the subject), the name of the person or thing that does, is, or 
suffers something is in that case. Notice that a noun following 
the verb to be is always in the nominative case. The Germans, in 
their expressive language, call these three cases the who-case, the 
wTwse-ease, and the whom-case. Just try this, and you will see that 
the nominative answers to WJio? tiie possessive to Whose? and the 
objective to Whom? 



LETTER VI. 

etymology of pronouns. 

My dear James : 

49. You will now refer to paragraphs 17, 18, and 19, in 
Letter III ; wluch paragraphs will refresh your memory 
as to the general nature and use of Pronouns. Then, in 
proceeding to become well acquainted with this Part of 
Speech, you will first observe that there are four classes, 
or descriptions, of Pronouns : first, the Personal^ second, 
the Pelative; third, the I>emonstratme; and, fourth, the 
Indefinite. 

50. In PERSONAL PRONOUNS there are four 
things to be considered: the person, the number, the 
gender, and the case. 

51. There are three, persons. The Pronoun which 
represents, or stands in the place of, the name of the per- 
son who speaks, is called the first person/ that which 
stands in the place of the name of the person who is 
spoken to, is called the second person / that which stands 



Of Pronouns. 39 

in the place of the name of the person who is spoken of, 
is csvllecl the M//y?^)f'r.s'o?«.. For example: "7" am asking 
yoxt about himP This cu'cumstance of person you will 
by-ancl-by finil to be of great moment ; because, as you 
will see, the verbs vaiy theu* endings sometimes to coiTe- 
spond with the person of the Pronoun ; and, therefore 
you ought to pay strict attention to it at the outset. 

52. The number is either singular or j)lui'al, and the 
Pronouns vary then' spp^.luV; to exj)ress a difference of 
number; as ia this table, which shows, at once, all the 
persons and all the numbers. 





SINGULAR. 


PLUKAL. 


First person 


I, 


We. 


Second person 


Thou, 


You. 


Third person 


He, 


They. 



53. The next thing is the gender. The Pronouns of 
the fii'st and second person have no changes to express 
gender; but the third person singular has changes for 
that purpose: he, she, or it/ and I need not point out 
to you the cases where one of these ought to be used 
instead of the other. 

54. The case is the last thing to be consid'fered in per- 
sonal Pronouns. The meaning of the word case, as used 
in the rules of Grammar, I have fully explained to you in 
Letter V, paiagraph 44. In paiagraphs 45, 46, 47, and 
48, in the same Letter, I have treated of the distiaction 
between the cases. Read all those pai'agraphs again 
before you proceed further : for now you will find then- 
meaning more cleai'ly explauied to you ; because the per- 
sonal Pronouns, and also some of the other Pronouns, 
have different end'mgs, or are comjjosed of different let- 
ters, in order to poiut out the different cases iu which 
they are : as, he, his, him. 

55. The personal Pronouns have, like the nouns, three 
cases: the Nomuiatlve^ i\\Q J'ossessiije, and the Objective. 



40 



Etymology 



The following table exhibits the whole of them at one 
view, with all the circumstances of person, number, 
gender, and case. 



First Person 



SINGULAE NUMBER. 

Mominatwe. Possessive. 
My, 



I, 



Second Person Thou, 
Masc. Gen. He, 



Third 
Pers. 



,Femin. " 



Neuter " 



She, 
It, 



Mine, 

Thy, 

Thine, 

His, 

Her, 

Hers, 

Its, 



PLURAL NUMBER. 



First Person 



Nominative. 



We, 



Second Person 

Masc. Gen. 



You, 



Possessive. 
j" Our, 
] Ours, 

^ Your, 
j Yours, 



Objective. 
Me. 

Thee. 
Him. 
Her. 

It. 

Objective. 

Us. 

You. 



Third 
Pers. 



Their, 
Theirs, 



Them. 



They, 
Femin. " They, 
^Neuter " They, ^ 

56. Upon this table there are some remarks to be 
attended to. In the possessive cases of I, Thou, She, 
We, You, and They, there are two different words : as, 
My, or Mine ; but you know that the former is used 
when followed by the name of the person or thing pos- 
sessed ; and that the latter is used when not so followed ; 
as, "This is ??*2/j9e?i/ this pen is mine.'''' And it is the 
same with regard to the possessive cases of Thou, /She, 
Wcj You, and They. 



Of Pronouns. 41 

The same grammarians that wish to call every word that stands 
before a noun an (uljective, call these words, viy, thy, hin, your, 
tlieir, possessive adjectives ; they call them such when coming di- 
rectly before a noun, and pronouns when standing alone. I know 
no change more iitterly useless and confusing. Do they not always 
stand in the place of nouns in the possessive case? "I met Tom 
Jones, and gave him a message from Ms father." Does this his 
not stand for Tarn's, a noun in the possessive case ? When Billy 
Clutterlmck says, "This is my dog," does it not mean, Tliis is 
Billy Clutterbuck's dog? 

57. 77ioic is here given as the seco?id person singular/ 
but common custom has set aside the rules of Grammar 
in this case ; and though we, in particular cases, still 
make use of 77i()u and Thee, we generally make use of 
Yoic instead of either of them. According to ancient rule 
and custom this is not correct ; but what a whole people 
adopts and universally practises must, in such cases, be 
deemed correct, and to be a superseding of ancient rult; 
and custom. 

58. Instead of ^oio the ancient practice was to j)ut ye 
in the nominative case of the second person pluiul ; but 
this j)ractice is now laid aside, except in cases which very 
seldom occm* ; but whenever ye is made use of, it must 
be in the oiominatlve, and nerer in the objective, case. I 
may, speaking to several persons, say, " Ye have injui-ed 
me," but not "I have injured ye." 

There is nothing that more strikingly displays the spii'it of caste 
in Germany than the fact that there are four different ways in 
German of saying you, according to the rank or social position of 
the person addressed (Sie, du, ihr, er). In English, we say you 
to the President, and you to a beggar ; you to a king, and you to an 
assemblage of kings ; and this is characteristic of the sturdy love of 
fair play (a word for which there is no proper equivalent in Ger- 
man) among the English race. Among German students, there 
are only two classes worthy of respect; those Wiai are students, and 
those that have been students; all the rest are cattle. — Te is never 
used now except in the solemn style, nominative plural: O ye boys 
of America, beware of the cheap story -papers, and the cheap and 



42 Etymology 

nasty story-books, for they carry the seeds of a disease that kill soul 
and body, something far worse than small-pox or yellow-fever ! 

It is a remarkable fact that many of our obsolete expressions are 
retained for the solemn style. Thou, thy, thee are now used in 
prayer, and in solemn compositions, such sis Coleridge's Hymn to 
Mont Blanc, or Milton's Paradise Lost. 

59. The words self and selves are sometimes added to 
the personal Pronouns ; as myself thyself himself ; but, 
as these compounded words are liable to no variations 
that can possibly lead to error, it will be useless to do any- 
thing fui'ther than just to notice them. 

60. The Pronoun ^7, though a personal Pronoun, does 
not always stand for, or at least appear to stand for, any 
noun whatever ; but is used in order to point out a state 
of things, or the cause of something produced. For 
instance : " It freezed hard last night, and it was so cold, 
that it was with great difficulty the travellers kept on 
their journey." Now, lohat was it that freezed so hard? 
Not the frost ; because the frost is the effect, and not the 
cause of freezing. We cannot say that it was the weather 
that freezed ; because the freezing constituted in part the 
weather itself. No ; the Pronoun it stands, in this place, 
for state of things, or circumstances / and this sentence 
might be written thus : " The freezing was so hard last 
night, and the cold was so severe, that the travellers 
found great difficulty in keepmg on their journey." Let 
us take another example or two : " It is a frost this morn- 
ing. It will rain to-night. .,It will be fine to-morrow." 
That is to say, " A state of things called frost exists this 
morning ; a state of things called rain will exist to-night ; 
and to-morrow a state of things called fine weather." 
Another example : " It is delightful to see brothers and 
sisters living in uninterrupted love to the end of their 
days." That is to say, " The state of things which ex- 
hibits brothers and sisters living in iminterrupted love to 
the end of their days is delightful to see." The Pronoun 



Of Pronouns. 43 

it is, in this its iiiipersonal capacit}-, used in a great 
vaiiety of iustances ; but I f orbeai' to extend my remarks 
on the subject here; because those remai'ks will find a 
more suitable place when I come to another part of my 
instructions. I have said enough here to prevent the 
puzzlmg that might have arisen from your perceiving that 
the Pronoun it was sometimes used without your bemg 
able to trace its connection with any noun either expressed 
or Tinderstood 

61. In order, however, farther to illustrate this matter 
in this place, I will make a remai'k or two upon the use 
of the word there. Example : " There are many men, who 
have been at Latin schools for yeai's, and who, at last, 
cannot wiite six sentences in English correctly," Now, 
you know, the word there, in its usual sense, has reference 
to 2)lace ; yet it has no such reference here. The mean- 
ing is that " Many men are in existence who have been at 
Latin schools." Again : " There never teas any thing so 
beautiful as that flower." That is to say, "Any thing so 
beautiful as that flower never existed, or never vms i?i 
beifif/.'^ 

It may, perhaps, be useful for you to know (especially if you 
intend to pass an examination) that the word t/iet'e in the sentences 
here given is called an expletive, which means a word used merely 
to fill up a vacancy. You can always leave it out without altering 
the sense. "There is a tree in tlie garden" is nothing but "a tree 
is in the garden." And you will now, perhaps, be better able to 
understand Pope's satirical lines on the works of poor authors : 

"While expletives their feeble aid do join, 
And ten slow words oft creep in one dull line." 

G2. We now come to the RELATIVE PRONOUNS, of 
which class there are only three/ namely, IVho, Which, 
and That. The two latter always remain the same, 
thi-ough all numbers, genders, and cases ; but the Pro- 
noun wAo changes its endings in order to express the 
possessive and objective cases; as, who, tohose, whom. 



44: Mtymology 

63. These Pronouns ai-e called relative, because they 
always relate directly to some noun or some personal 
Pronoun, or to some combination of words, which is 
called the antecedent ; that is to say,. the person or thing 
going before. Thus : " The soldier who was killed at the 
siege." ;iSoZ(r?ier is the antecedent. Again: "The men, if 
I am rightly informed, who came hither last night, who 
went away this morning, whose money you have received, 
and to lohom you gave a receipt, are natives of South 
America." Men is here the antecedent; and in this 
sentence there are all the variations to which this Pro- 
noun is liable. 

64. WTio, v^hose, and whom cannot be used correctly 
as relatives to any Nouns or Pronouns which do not re- 
present oneii, wome7i, or children. It is not correct to 
say, the horse, or the dog, or the tree, v)ho was so and so ; 
or to whom was done this or that ; or whose color, or 
any thing else, was such or such. But the word That, as 
a relative Pronoun, may be applied to nouns of all sorts ; 
as, the hoy that ran ; the horse that galloped ; the tree 
that was blowed down. 

The real reason for this use of the word that, however, is be- 
cause we must sometimes find a pronoun that will stand for both 
men and animals together : ' ' The horses and the riders tJiat we saw 
are the favorites." And concerning the pronoun who, a change 
has taken place since Cobbett's time : we can now use it in the 
possessive case (whose) with reference to things as well as per- 
sons. " The mountain whose top is covered with snow," is con- 
sidered easier and more elegant than ' ' The mountain the top of 
which is covered with snow." The poets began to use this form, 
and prose- writers now use it too. By-the-way, you will notice that 
Cobbett is a little peculiar in using some irregular verbs in the 
regular form ; as, blowed and froze for blown and frose. More of 
this farther on. 

65. Which, as a relative Pronoun, is confined to irra- 
tional creatures, and here it may be used as a relative in- 
differently with that y as, the horse which galloped ; the 



Of Pronouns. 45 

tree which was blowed down. This application of the 
relative vhich solely to irrational creatures is, however, 
of modern date ; for, in the Lord's Prayei", in the English 
Church Service, we say, " Our Father vihich art in heaven." 
In the American Litui-gy this error has been corrected ; 
and they say, " Oui- Father who art in heaven." 

(SO). I cannot, even for the pi'esent, quit these relative 
Pronoiuis without observing to you that they are words 
of vast importance, and that more errors, and errors of 
gi-eater consequence, arise from a misapplication of them 
than fi'om the misapplication of almost all the other 
classes of words put together. The reason is this, they 
are relatives, and they frequently stand as the repre- 
sentatives of that which has gone before, and which 
stands in a distant part of the sentence. This will be 
more fully explained when I come to the iSytitax of 
Pronouns ; but the matter is of such great moment 
that I could not refi'ain from giving you an intimation 
of it here. 

67. The DEMONSTEATIVE PRONOUNS are so called 
because they more particularly mark or demonstrate the 
nouns before which they ai'e placed, or for which they 
sometimes stand. They are. This, These, That, Those, 
and What. The use of them is so well known, and is 
liable to so httle error, that my chief object in giving 
them this sepai'ate place is to show you the difference be- 
tween That, when a relative, and when not a relative. 
Take an example : " Tliat man is not the man, as far as I 
am able to discover, that came hither last night." The 
first of these Thats does not relate to the man ; it merely 
points him out ; but the latter relates to him, carries you 
back to him, and supplies the place of repetition. This 
same word, That, is sometimes a Conjunction; as, " That 
man is not the man, as far as I can discover, that came 
hither last night, and that was so ill that he could hardly 
walk." The relative is repeated iu the third That; but 



46 Etymology 

the fourth That is merely a conjunction serving to con- 
nect the effect of the illness with the cause. 

"I say that that tliat that that author uses is false." Try and 
discover the four different parts of speech represented by the word 
that in this sentence. — Tliis^ that, and their plural, these, those, are, 
like the articles, called limiting adjectives when used directly be- 
fore nouns; this hat, these hats. When used with reference to 
things pointed at, these refers to things nearer at hand than those. 

68. Perhaps a profound exammation of the matter 
would lead to a proof of That being always a Pronoun; 
but, as such examination would be more cruious than use- 
ful, I shall content myself with having clearly shown you 
the difference in its offices, as a relative, as a demonstra- 
tive, and as a conjunction. 

69. ~Wliat, together with v^ho, vjhose, whom, and which, 
are employed in asking questions • and are sometimes 
ranged under a separate head, and called Interrogative 
Pronouns. I have thought this unnecessary ; but here is 
an observation of importance to attend to; for tohich, 
though as a relative it cannot be applied to the intellectual 
species, is, as an interrogative, properly applied to that 
species ; as, " Which man was it who spoke to you f 

70. What sometimes stands for both noun and relative 
Pronoun; as, " What I want is well known." That is to 
say, " The thing vnhich I want is well known." Indeed, 
xohat has, in all cases, this extended signification; for 
when, in the way of inquiry as to words which we have 
not clearly understood, we say. What? our full meaning 
is, "Repeat to us that which you have said," or, "the 
toords which you have spoken." 

In this sentence, "I gave him what (that which) he wanted," 
what is a relative pronoun ; but in this sentence, ' ' I gave him what 
funds he wanted," it is an adjective. Notice that we always say 
that, never what, after every thing, any thing, nothing, something, 
all things. 

71. The INDETEBMINATE PBONOXJNS are so called 



Of .i(?Jectwes. 47«. 

because tliey express their objects in a general and inde- 
tenuinate manner. Several of them are also adjectives. 
It is only where they ai*e employed alone, that is to say, 
without nouns, that they ought to be regarded as Pro- 
nouns. For instance : " One is always hearing of the un- 
happiness of o?ie person or another. ^^ The first of these 
o/ies is a Pronoun; the last is an Adjective, as is also the 
word another; for a noun is tinder stood to follow, though 
it is not expressed. These pronouns are as follows : One, 
any, each, none, some, other, every, either, many, whoever, 
whatever, neither, and some few others, but all of them 
words invai-iable in then- orthography, and all of very 
common use. 



LETTER VII. 

etymology of adjectives. 

My de.\r James: 

72. In Letter III, paragraph 21, I have described what 
an Adjective is. You will, therefore, now read that para- 
graph carefully over, before we proceed in studying the 
contents of the present Letter. 

73. The Adjectives have no changes to express gender 
or case ; but they have changes to express degrees of com- 
parison. As Adjectives describe the qualities and proper- 
ties of nouns, and as these may be possessed in a degree 
higher in one case than in another case, such words have 
degrees of comparison; that is to say, changes in their 
endings, to suit these varying cu'cumstances. A tree may 
be high, but another may be higher, and a thu'd may be 
the highest. Adjectives have, then, these three degrees: 
the fii-st degree, or rather, tlie primitive word, called 
the J^ositive ; the second, the VonqHirative ; the third, 
the Superlative. For the forming of these degi-ees I shall 



48 Mtymology 

give you four rules • and if you pay strict attention to 
these rules, you will need to be told very little more about 
this Part of Speech.. 

74. First Rule. Adjectives in general, which end in a 
consonant, form their comparative degree by adding er to 
the positive, and form their superlative degree by adding 
est to the positive ; as, 

POSITIVE. OOMPAEATIVE. STJPEELA.TIVK. 

Rich, Richer, Richest. 

75. Second Mule. Adjectives, which end in e, add, in 
forming their comparative, only an r, and in forming their 
superlative, st; as, 

POSITIVE. OOMPAEATIVE. SUPEELATIVE. 

Wise, Wiser, Wisest. 

76. Third Hide. When the positive ends in d, g, or t, 
and when these consonants are, at the same time, preceded 
by a single votoel, the consonant is doubled in forming 
the comparative and sujDerlative ; as, 

POSITIVE. OOMPAEATIVE. SUPEELATIVE. 

Red, Redder, Reddest. 

Big, Bigger, Biggest. 

Hot, Hotter, Hottest. 

But, if the d, g, or t, be preceded by another consonant, 
or by more than one vowel, the final consonant is not 
doubled in the forming of the two latter degrees ; as, 

POSITIVE. OOMPAEATIVE. SUPEELATIVE. 

Kind, Kinder, Kindest. 

Neat, Neater, Neatest. 

77. Fourth Mule. When the positive ends in y, pre- 
ceded by a consonant, the y changes into ie in the other 
degrees. 

POSITIVE. OOMPAEATIVE. SUPERLATIVE. 

Lovely, Lovelier, Loveliest. 

Pretty, Prettier, Prettiest. 



Of Acljectloen. 49 

78. There ai'e some Adjectives which cau be reduced to 
no rule, and Avhich must be considered as irregular ; as, 



POSITIVE. 


OOMPAKATIVK. 


8UPKRLATIVK. 


Good, 


Better, 


Best. 


Bad, 


Worse, 


Worst. 


Little, 


Less, 


Least. 


Much, 


More, 


Most. 



79. Some Adjectives can have no degrees of compaiison, 
because then* signification admits of no augmentation ; as, 
all, each, every, any, several, some; and all the nrunerical 
Adjectives; as, one, two, three; first, second, third. 

But there are some other adjectives that do not admit of com- 
panson. Consider, for a moment, such words as true, round, 
square, perfect, dead. Properly speaking, nothing can be truer, 
rounder, squarer, more perfect, or deader than another; yet, in 
popular speech, these words are often used in the comparative or 
superlative degree. How often we hear people say, " I never saw 
any thmg more perfect;" "this figure is not quite so round as 
that;" and the like. I do not mean to say that such expressions 
are absolutely unpermissible ; only that they are not strictly cor- 
rect. To say "more nearly round" or "more nearly perfect" 
would be more nearly correct. These expressions, however, occur 
in the rapid flow of conversation, and perhaps express the idea 
intended better than a more correct (notice these very words) or 
more choice expression. Editors sometimes speak of a political 
question as " the deadest of all dead issues ;" which is very forcible 
language; and there is a comparison implied in the familiar ex- 
pressions, "dead as a door-nail, dead as Julius Caesar."— I may 
here mention that the word old, in its regular form, old, older, oldest, 
is used with reference to persons and things in general ; while the 
forms, elder, eldest, is used to distinguish kinsfolk or historical 
personages: my elder brother or nephew, my eldest sister or 
cousin; the elder Pliny, the elder Brutus, the elder or younger 
Pitt. 

Far, fartlier, fartJiest are used exclusively with reference to dis- 
tance; but we sometimes use the form furtlier, to indicate some- 
thing more, or to point out that we have something mo7'e to say on 
a sul)j(ct. Tiie latter form is also sometimes used as an adjective; 
have yoM'iwy furtlier objection? 
3 



50 Etymology 

80. Adjectives which end in most are superlative, and 
admit of no change ; as, uttnost, uppermost, innermost. 

81. However, you wUl observe that all Adjectives which 
admit of comparison may form their degrees by the use 
of the words more and most; as, 

POSITIVE. COMPAEATIVE. SUPEELATIVE. 

Rich, More rich, Most rich. 

Tender, More tender. Most tender. 

When the positive contains but one syllable, the degrees 
are usually formed by adding to the positive according to 
the four rules. When the positive contains ttoo syllables, 
it is a matter of taste which method you shall use in 
forming the degrees. The ear is, in this case, the best 
guide. But when the positive contains onore than two 
syllables, the degrees must be formed by the use of more 
and tnost. W^e may say tender and tenderest, pleasanter 
oxx^L pleasantest, prettier oxidi prettiest ; but who could tol- 
erate delicater and delicatest f 

Nobody but Thomas Carlyle, who uses beautifulest, wonderfulest, 
and the like. To use another of Carlyle's Germanisms, there is no 
question but this usage is unngTit. 



LETTER VIII. 

etymology of vekbs. 

My dear James: 

82. The first thing you have to do in beginning your 
study, as to this important Part of Speech, is to read 
agam very slowly and carefully paragraphs 23, 24, 25, 
and 26, in Letter III. Having, by well attending to what 
is said in those paragraphs, learned to distinguish Yei'bs 
from the words belonging to other Parts of Speech, you 
will now enter, with a clear head, on an inquiry into the 



Of Verbs. 51 

valuations to wliicli the words of this Part of Speech are 
liable. 

83. Sorts of Verbs. Verbs are considered as active, 
passive, or neuter. A Verb is called active when it ex- 
presses an action which is produced by the nominative of 
the sentence; as, "Pitt re6'<rai«ef? the Bank." It is pas- 
sive when it expresses an action which is received, or 
endured, by the person or thing which is the nominative 
of the sentence; as, "the Bank is restrained.'"' It is 
neuter when it expresses simply the state of being, or of 
existence, of a person or thing ; as, " Dick lies in bed ;" 
or, when it expresses an action confined toithiii the actor. 

84. It is of great consequence that you clearly vuider- 
stand these distinctions, because I shall, by-and-by, use 
these terms very frequently. And in order to give you a 
proof of the necessity of attending to these distinctions, 
I will here give you a specimen of the errors which are 
sometimes committed by those who do not understand 
Grammar. This last-mentioned Verb, to lie, becomes, in 
the past time, lay. Thus : "Dick lies on a bed now, but 
some time ago, he lay on the floor." This verb is often 
confounded with the Verb to lay, which is an active Verb, 
and which becomes, in its past time, hud. Thus : " I lay 
my hat on the table to-day, but, yesterday, I laid it on 
the shelf." Let us take another instance, in order the 
more cleai'ly to explain this matter. A Verb may some- 
times be what we call a neuter Verb, though it expresses 
an action ; but this happens when the action is coiifi,/ted 
icithin the actor / that is to say, when there is no object 
to which the action jjasses. /Strike is clearly an active 
Verb, because something is stricken y a stroke is yioen to, 
or ^;?</ upon, something. But in the case of to rise, 
though there is an action, it passes on to no object ; as, / 
rise early. Here is no object to which the action passes. 
But to raise in an active Verb, because the action passes on 
to an object ; as, I raise a stick, I raise niy hand, I raise 



52 Etytnology 

my head, and also I raise myself; because, though, in this 
last instance the action is confined to w?-e, it is understood 
that my miad gives the motion to my body. These 
two Verbs are, in speaking and writing, incessantly con- 
founded ; though one is a neuter and the other an active 
Verb, though one is regular and the other irregular, or 
though they are not, in any person, time, or mode, com- 
posed of the same letters. This confusion could never 
take place if attention were paid to the principle above 
laid down. 

*f*- This is one of the hard passages in the gospel of grammar; a 
passage which, I am sure, has been a stumbling-block to many a 
poor fellow who has been unable to make head or tail of it. Well 
do I remember the difficulty I had myself, when I first studied 
this grammar, in making it out. It is, I now see, no wonder that 
the matter was very cloudy to me ; for even Cobbett, the plainest 
and clearest of writers, has got into a muddle about it, as I shall 
presently show. 

Look again at my explanation of the difference between the 
transitive and the intransitive verb (note to paragraph 11). Then 
remember that Cobbett's '•'■ nominative'''' is another word for subject, 
and his "«er5" another word ior -predicate. " Boys study gram- 
mar." These three words form subject, predicate, and object. ' ' Man 
dies." Here is nothing but subject and predicate; and you will 
notice that "study" has an object, while "dies" has not. 

I rise at six o'clock. I raise a wall; I raise the price ; I raise my 
voice. You will readily see that the verb to rise is intransitive, 
because it has no object; its action does not pass to anything; and 
that to raise is transitive, because it has an object ; its action passes 
to something, even if it is my own voice, head or hand. Now both 
these verbs, as used by Cobbett, are in the active voice, for the pass- 
ing or not passing of the action has nothing whatever to do with 
the verb being in the active or passive voice, but only with its 
being transitive or intransitive. It is the state of the subject (or 
nominative) alone that determines whether a verb is active or pas- 

, sive. "Iraeearly. I raise my hand." Both these verbs are in the 
active voice ; for the subject or nominative (I) is acting, and not 
acted upon. The verb is in the passive voice where the subject or 
NOMINATIVE is ACTED ON; as, I AM raised; but it is m the active 
voice when the subject or nominative is acting ; as, I rise at five 



Of Verbs. 53 

o'clock. Kotice that the verb in the passive voice always consists 
of some part of the verb to be and the past participle of another 
verb. Cobbett is altogether wrong in saying that "to raise is an 
active verb because it passes on to an object; " it would be active 
whether the action passed on to an object or not; for, as I have 
said, it is the staie of the subject that determines its aetiveness or 
passiveness, and not the verb itself. The passing of the action 
simply shows that it is transitive. 

Now observe that this matter of transitive and intransitive verbs 
is something by itself, and that active and passive voice is also 
something by itself. It will, perhaps, help you to understand the 
matter, when I tell you that no intransitive wi'b can be used in tlie 
passive voice. You can not say, I am slept, I am dreamt, I am 
lived. No ; only transitive verbs can be used in the passive voice : 
I am hated, I am robbed, I am punished. These forms come from 
the verbs to hate, to rob, to punish, all of which take an object, and 
are therefore transitive ; but the forms to sleep, to dream, to live, do 
not take an object and are therefore intransitive, and cannot be 
used in the passive voice. 

Now, as to that other bugbear, the neuter verb, I think we shall 
not have much difficulty in understanding it. I never learned the 
meaning of it from Cobbett, I must confess. And here I may 
inform you that many grammarians discard the term neuter alto- 
gether, and set neuter verbs down simply as intransitive verbs, 
which, indeed, they are. But you must understand what is meant 
by a neuter verb, any way. You have seen that wlien a verb is 
used in the active voice, the subject or nominative of that verb 
is ACTING, .and that when one is used in the passive voice, 
the subject or nominative of that verb is aotbd on. Now, 
where a neuter verb is used, the subject is neither acting nor 
acied on; it is neither, neuter. Take an example of all three 
cases: Tommy kicks the pony; Tommy is kicked by the pony; 
Tommy is ill. Now in the first case, kicks is active, because the 
subject (Tommj') is acting ; in the second case, is kicked is passive, 
because the subject is acted on ; and in the third case, it is neuter, 
because the subject is neither acting nor acted on : it is existence 
WITHOUT ACTION. Just try if this is not the case with such verbs 
as to sit, to stand, to exist, to live, to lie, to sleep. When you are 
sitting, standing, existing, living, etc., you are neither acting nor 
acted on; you are neither, neuter. Of course, these verbs are 
intransitive, too; for all neuter verbs are intransitive, but all 
intransitive verba arc not neuter. There's the rub ; there is where 



54 - Etymology 

Cobbett makes Ms mistake: be calls tbe verb to rise neuter, 
wbile it is nothing of tbe sort; it is simply intransitive, and 
active. The most recent classification of verbs is into active- 
transitive, active-ititransitive, and neuter. He kicks tbe pony; 
he rises; he lives. Cobbett, no doubt, followed the grammarians 
and dictionary-makers of his time. 

85. Having tlius given you the means of distinguishing 
the sorts of Verbs, I now proceed to matters which are 
common to all the sorts. There are four things to be 
considered in a verb ; the person, the number, the time, 
and the mode. 

86. The Peeson. — Read again Letter VI, on the Etymol- 
ogy of Pronoiins. You will there clearly see the use of 
this distinction about Persons ; and, as I have told you, 
you will find that it is a matter of great consequence ; be- 
cause it will now, at once, be evident to you that, unless 
the distinction of person be attended to, almost every 
sentence must be erroneous. 

87. The Verb must agree in person with the Noun or 
the Pronoun which is the nominative of the sentence. 
Look back at Letter V, and at paragraphs 44, 45, 46, and 
47, in order to refresh your memory as to the nominative 
and other cases. The Verb, then, must agree with the 
nominative ; as, "I write; he writes.'''' To say, "I lorites ; 
he write ; " these would be both erroneous. 

88. Look back at the explanation about the persons in 
the Etymology of Pronouns in Letter VI. There ar'e 
tho^ee persons / but our Verbs have no variation in their 
spelling, except for the third person singular. For we 
say, "I write, you write, we torite, they write /'^ and only 
" he, she, or it writes.'^ This, then, is a very plain matter. 

89. Number is a matter equally plain, seeing that our 
Verbs do not, except in one or two instances, vary their 
endings, to express number. But when several nouns or 
pronouns come together, care must be taken to make the 
Verb agree with them ; as, " Knight and Johnstone resist 



Of Verhs. 55 

the t}a*ants." Not resists. But this >vill be more fully 
dwelt on in the Syntax. 

90. The Time. — The Verb has vai-iations to express the 
time of an action; as, "Sidniouth writes a Cii'cular Letter; 
Sidmouth wrote a Cii-cular Letter ; Sidmouth will write a 
Cii-cular Letter." Again: "The Queen ch/ies the tyrants ; 
the Queen dejied the tyrants ; the Queen to ill defy the 
tyi'ants." The Times of a Verb are, therefore, called the 
present, the jjws^, and i\xe future. 

91. The Modes. — The Modes of Verbs are the different 
manners of expressing an action or a state of being, which 
manners are sometimes positive, sometimes conditional, 
and sometimes indeterminate ^ and there are changes or 
variations, in the spelHng, or wiiting, of the Verb, or of 
the httle words used with the Verb, in order to express 
this difference in manner and sense. I will give you an 
instance : " He walks fast." " If he toalk fast, he will 
fatigue himself." In most other languages the Verb 
changes its form very often and very much to make it 
exjjress the different modes. In ours it does not ; because 
v.e have little words called signs, which we use with the 
Verbs instead of varying the form of the Verbs them- 
selves. To make this matter clear, I will give you an 
example of the English compai-ed with the French 
language in this respect. 

E. F. 

I march, Je m,arche. 

I mai'ched, Je marchais. 

I might mai'ch, Je marchasse. 

I should mareh^ Je marcherais. 

There are other variations in the French Verb ; but we 
e.'Fect the purposes of these vaiiations by the use of the 
; ./jLiH, shall, may, might, could, would, and others. 

'.)2. The Modes ai-e foui* in number ; the Infinitioe, the 
. . dicative, the Subjunctive, and the Imperative. Besides 



56 Etymology 

tliese, there are the two Participles, of which I shall speak 
presently. 

93. The Infinitive Mode is the Verb in its primitive 
state ; as, to 'inarch. And this is called the Infinitive be- 
cause it is without bounds or limit. It merely expresses 
the action of marching, without any constraint as to per- 
son or number or time. The little word to makes, in fact, 
a part of the Verb. This word to is, of itself, a preposi- 
tion/ but, as prefixed to Verbs, it is merely a sign of the 
Infinitive Mode. In other languages there is no such 
sign. In the French, for instance, aller means to go/ 
ecrire means to write. Thus, then, you will bear in mind 
that in English, the to makes a part of the Verb itself, 
when in the Infinitive Mode. 

94. The Indicative Mode is that in which we express 
an action, or state of being, positively; that is to say, 
without any condition, or any dependent circumstance. 
It merely indicates the action or state of being, without 
heing subjoined to anything which renders the action or 
state of being dependent on any other action or state of 
being. Thus: '■'■ He writes P This is the Indicative. 

95. But the Subjunctive Mode comes into use when I 
say, " If he torite, the guilty tyrants will be ready with 
their dungeons and axes." In this case there is some- 
thing subjoined / and therefore this is called the Sub- 
junctive Mode. Observe, however, that in our language 
there is no very great use in this distinction of modes ; 
because, for the most part, our little signs do the busi- 
ness, and they never vary in the letters of which they are 
composed. The distinction is useful only as regards the 
employment of Verbs without the signs, and where the 
signs are left to be understood; as in the above case, "If 
he (should) write, the guilty tyrants will be ready." And 
observe, further, that when the signs are used, or under- 
stood, the Verb retains its original or primitive form 
throughout all the persons, numbers, and times. 



Of Verbs. 57 

96. The Imperative Mode is mentioned here mei'ely for 
form's sake. It is that state of the Verb which com- 
mands, orders, bids, calls to, or invokes ; as, come hither; 
be good ; march away ; pay me. In other languages there 
are changes in the spelling of the Verbs to answer to this 
mode ; but in ours there ai'e none of these ; and therefore 
the matter is hai'dly worth notice, except as a mere mat- 
ter of form. 

97. The Participles, however, are different in point of 
importance. They are of two sorts, the active and the 
passive. The former ends always in ing, and the latter 
is generally the same as the past time of the Verb out of 
which it grows. Thus : working is an active participle, 
and worked a passive participle. They are called parti- 
ciples because they partake of the qualities of other Parts 
of Speech as well as of Verbs. For instance: "I am 
working / working is laudable ; a working man is more 
worthy of honor than a titled plunderer who hves in idle- 
ness." In the first instance, working is a Verb, in the 
second a Noun, in the third an Adjective. So in the case 
of the passive participle: I worked yesterday' ; that is 
worked mortar. The first is a Verb, the last an Adjective. 

After the indicative, grammarians now insert another mood, 
called the 'potential mood, whicli indicates power, permission, pos- 
sibility, necessity, determination, duty. This mood Cobbett runs 
into the subjunctive, after the manner of the French. It is that 
form which necessitates one of "those powerful little Avords," as 
he calls them, may, might, can, must, will, shall, should, loould. 
This matter of mood, which is quite a difficult subject for begin- 
ners, became much clearer to me when I saw how the Germans 
termed their moods in their expressive language. They call the 
infinitive mood the ground-form ; the indicative %\\c reality-fonn ; 
the potential {\\e pos)sibility-form ; the subjunctive, Wm doubt-form ; 
and the imperative the commaiiding-fonn. Like the who-cuse, the 
whose-case, and the whom-case, these words are far more expressive 
than the Latin terms we use, which ought to have been left where 
they belonged, in Latin. 

You will perhaps be surprised to see will and shall, would and 

3* 



58 Etymology 

sTwuld, set down as belonging to the potential mood. You "will 
say they belong to the future and the conditional. So they do ; 
but they belong to the potential, too, as I shall show you by-and- 
by. Take these two examples of the difference between the future 
and the potential: " I shall write (future) to you, if I can. I will 
write (potential) to you, come what may. You will do (future) 
that to-morrow. You sAaZZ <fo (potential) as I tell you." This is 
one of the most difficult matters in English grammar; a matter 
which, Cobbett says, foreigners never learn rightly, but which na- 
tives learn to use rightly from infancy, and do so without ever 
thinking of the matter. Extensive reading of good authors and 
extensive intercourse with good speakers are among the best 
means of learning the correct use of these words. I have read of 
an Irishman who, on falling into the river, exclaimed: "I will 
drown, and nobody shall help me!" More of this anon. (Note to 
paragraph 258.) 

98. Thus have I gone through all the circumstances of 
change to which Verbs are liable. I will now give you 
the complete conjugation of a Terb. To conjugate, in its 
usual acceptation, means to johi together ; and, as used 
by grammarians, it means to place under one view all the 
variations in the form of a Verb; beginning with the 
Infinitive Mode and ending with the Participle. I will 
now lay before you, then, the conjugation of the Verb to 
work, exhibiting that Verb in all its persons, numbers^ 
times, and modes. 

INFINITIVE MODE. 

To WOKK. 

INDICATIVE MODE. 

Singular. Plural. 

r 1st Person. I work, We work. 

Present J g^ person. Thou workest, You work, 

lime, ^g^ Person. He, she, or it works. They work. 
Past f — ^ worked. We worked. 

Time ) — Thou workedst. You worked. 

(^ — He worked, They worked. 

Future C — I shall or will work, We shall or will work. 

Time. '\ — Thou shalt or wilt work, You shall or will work. 

(^ — He shall or will work, They shall or will work. 



Of Verbs. 59 

SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. 

If I work, or may, might, could, would, or should work. 

If thou work, or may " " " work. 

If he, she, or it work, or may " " " work. 

If wc work, or may " " " work. 

If you work, or may " " " work. 

If they work, or may " " " work. 

IMPERATIVE MODE. 

Let me work, Let us work. 

Work thou, Work you. 

Let him work, Let them work. 

PARTICIPLES. 
Active. — Working. 
Pa-mve. — Worked. 

99. Some explanatory remarks are necessary here. The 
third person singular of the Indicative present used to be 
■written vsdth eth • as, workcth • but this spelling has long 
been disused. ^\ie,past time may be formed by did ; as, 
did loork, instead of icorked ; and do work may be used 
in the present time ; but, in fact, these little words are a 
great deal more than mere marks of the times. They are 
used in one time to express the negative of another, or to 
affii-m Avith more than ordinaiy emphasis. 

100. Grammarians generally make a present and a past 
time under the Subjunctive Mode ; but the truth is that 
any of the signs may apply to the present, j)ast, or futui'e 
of that mode. These are httle words of vast import and 
of constant use ; ajid though that use is so very difficult 
to be leai'ned by foreigners, we oiu'selves never make mis- 
takes with regard to it. The Verb to be alone changes 
its form in order to make a past time in the Subjunctive 
Mode. 

101. As to the Imperative Mode, where the pronouns 
thoic and you are put after the Verb, we seldom put the 
thou and the you.. "NVe make use of the Verb only, Avhich 
is quite sufficient. 



60 Etymology y 

102. Some grammarians put in their conjugations what 
they call the compound times ; as, I have worked, I had 
worked, I shall have worked, I inay have worked, and so 
on. But this can only serve to fill up a book; for all 
these consist merely in the introduction and use of the 
Verb to have in its various parts. In the above conjuga- 
tion all the changes or variations of the Verb are exhib- 
ited ; and it is those changes and variations which, under 
the present head, form the important object of our 
inquiry. 

Well, at the risk of incurring the reproach of merely ' ' filling up 
a book," or, as the reviewers call it, "padding a book," I shall 
give you this one verb entire, in its present form, with its present 
names for moods and tenses. Do not be afraid ; it will not confuse 
you, if you will only be patient. There are about six or seven 
thousand verbs in our language, and they are all, except in the 
past tense and past participle, conjugated like this. It is in these 
last two parts that the irregular verbs vary. You cannot utter a 
single sentence, however short, without a verb ; so, surely, you 
ought to see this important part of speech from head to foot. Be- 
sides, I believe that our present form of laying out the verb is 
simpler than it was in Cobbett's time, for the tenses are so arranged 
that they are more easily remembered. (See next page.) 

You will notice that the compound forms are, as Cobbett says, 
nothing but the past participle, woi-ked, and the various forms of 
the verb to have. But the seeing it will help you to remember it. 
As to the tenses, consider for a moment how many kinds of time 
there are in nature. What is the time called in which you now 
are? What time is that you had yesterday? What time is to- 
morrow ? Well, there are three kinds, present, past, and future; 
and in grammar you may say there are really only three tenses, 
with a tail to each of them, a perfect tail ; and this perfect tail is 
the compound form of the verb. It is nothing but present, present- 
perfect; past, past-^er/eci ; future, future-per/ecf. As to the using 
of them, you will learn that when we come to the Syntax. Then 
you will notice ^hat there are five moods, just as there are five con- 
tinents, five oceans, five races of men, and five zones. Notice that 
the subjunctive has no changes whatever in its endings. This 
mood, of which common people and common writers know nothing, 
and which, some writers think, will finally disappear altogether, is 



Of Verbs. 



61 



Complete conjugation of the active verb To Work. 

INFINITIVE MOOD. 

Present tense — To work. Present perfect tense— To have worked. 

INDICATIVE MOOU. 



SIMPLE TENSES. 

Present tense. 
I work, 
Thou woi kest. 
He works, 
We work, 
You work, 
They work. 

Past tense. 
I work, 

Thou workedst, 
He worked, 
We worked. 
You worked. 
They worked. 

Future tense. 
I shall work. 
Thou wilt work, 
He will work, 
We shall work, 
You will work. 
They will work. 

Present tense conditional. 
I should work. 
Thou wouldst work, 
Ue would work. 
Wo should work. 
You would work. 
They would work. 



COMPOUND TENSES. 

Present perfect tense. 
I have worked. 
Thou hast worked. 
He has worked. 
We have worked. 
You have worked. 
They have worked. 

Past perfect tense. 
I had worked. 
Thou hadst worked. 
He had worked. 
We had worked. 
You had worked. 
They had worked. 

J/Wture perfect tense. 
I shall have worked. 
Thou wilt have worked. 
He will have worked. 
We shall have worked. 
You will have worked. 
They will have worked. 

Perfect tense conditional. 
I should have worked. 
Thou wouldst have worked. 
He would have worked. 
We should have worked. 
You would have worked. 



They would have worked. 
POTENTIAL MOOD. 

Present perfect tense. 
I may, can, will have worked. 
Thou mayst, canst, shalt have worked. 
He may, can, shall have worked. 
We may, can, shall have worked. 
You may, can, shall have worked. 
They may, can, shall have worked. 

Past perfect tense. 
I might, could, should have worked. 
Thoumightst,couldst,shouldst work, Thou mijjhtst, cuuklst, shouldst have 

worked. 
He mi;:ht, could, should have worked. 
We might, could, should have worked. 
You misht, could, sliould have worked. 
They might,could,shou]d have worked. 
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD. 
Present tense. Present perfect tense. 

If I work. If I have worked, 

thou work, thou have worked, 

he work, he have worked, 

we work, we have worked, 

you work, you have worked, 

they work, ^^^T have worked. 

Past tenst. Past perfect tense. 



Present tense. 
I may, can, will work, 
Thou mayst, canst, shalt work, 
He may, can, shall work, 
We may, can, shall work, 
You may, can, shall work, 
They may, can, shall work. 

Past tense . 
I might, could, should work, 



He might could, should work, 
We might, could, should work, 
You might, could, should work, 
They might, could, should work. 



If I worked, 
thou worked, 
he worked, 
we worked, 
you worked, 
they worked. 



Work I 



Present ijarticiple. 
Working. 



If I had worked, 
thou had worked, 
he had worked . 
we had worked, 
you had worked, 
they had worked, 
IMPERATIVE MOOD. 

Work thou I 
PARTICIPLES. 
Past participle. Present perfect (participial form). 
Worked. Having worked. 



62 Etymology 

used to mark a certain uncertainty or contingency which, the indic- 
ative cannot well mark, and is used not only after if^ but after though, 
although, lest, unless, provided that, and various other expressions in- 
dicating uncertainty. The only verb in our whole language which 
makes a complete change in the subjunctive is the verb to be, and 
that becomes if I be, if I ^oere. Cobbett follows the conjugation of 
the French verb in using the verb let in the imperative. ' ' Let me 
work " is not the imperative of the verb to work, but the imperative 
of the verb to let ; as is the case with everything that follows let • 
let me eat, let me drink, let me be. No English verb needs more 
than the one word in the imperative, for the subject or pronoun 
you is generally unexpressed, or left understood. It is sometimes 
used for emphasis or contrast; as, "Work you! I shall not 
work." As to those two great stumbling-blocks of many persons, 
shall and will, should and would, all you have to do here is to notice 
that, in the future and conditional tenses, shall and should are gen- 
erally u»ed in the first person singular and plural — that is, after 
/ and we — and that will and would are generally used in the other 
persons. 

103. The Verbs to have and to he are of great use in our 
language. They are called auxiliary verbs. To let and to 
do are also called auxiliaries, but they are of far less im- 
portance than to have and to be. Before, however, I say 
more on the subject of these auxiliaries, I must speak of 
all the Verbs as regular or irregular, just observing here 
that the word auxiliary means helper, or helping. 

104. Verbs are called regular when they have their 
changes or variations according to a certain rule or 
manner. Thus : " I walk, I walked/ I work, I loorked.^^ 
But I cannot say, "I writed.^^ I must say, "I wrote.''"' 
Now observe that we call regular Verbs all those which 
end their past tifne of the Indicative and tlaeiv passive 
participle in ed/ and if you now look back at the conju- 
gation of the Verb to work, you will find that it is a regu- 
lar Verb. Indeed this is the case with almost all Verbs. 
But there are some little irregularities even here, and they 
must be very well attended to, because a want of attention 
to them leads to very great errors even as to spelliag. 



Of Verbs. 63 

105. Tliese little irrepfulai-ities I shall notice under five 
separate heads ; and if you should forget, at any time, 
what has been said on the subject, a reference to these 
will in a moment set you right. — I. The Verb to work is 
perfecthj regular, for it has ed added to it in order to 
form the^>a.s< time, and also in order to form the passive 
2Kf.rticiple. It is the same with the Verbs to inalk, to tiirti, 
to abcmdon, and many others. But if the Infinitive, that 
is to say, the primitive or original word, end in e, then d 
only is added in the past time and participle, and st in- 
stead of est after thou ; as in the case of to move, which 
becomes m.ov<'d and inovest. You have seen, also, in the 
case of the Verb to work, that we add only a» s to form 
the third person singular of the present of the I-»dicative; 
lie works. But if the Infinitive end in h, s, x, or z, then es 
must be added ; as, to vush, he wishes ; to toss, he tosses / 
fo box, he boxes/ to buzz, he buzzes. — II. When the Infini- 
tive ends in y, and when that y has a consonant imme- 
diately before it, the y is changed into ie, to form the third 
person singular of the j^resent of the Indicative ; as to 
rip)ly, he replies. But (and I beg you to mark it well) if 
the ending y have a vowel immediately before it, the Verb 
follows the general rule in the formation of the third 
person singular of the present of the Indicative ; as to 
delay, he delays; and not he delaies. It is the same in 
the second person singular ; as, to reply, thou, repliest, to 
delay, thou delay est. — IH. When the Infinitive ends in y 
with a consonant immediately before it, the past time of 
the Indicative and the passive participle are formed by 
using an i instead of the y ; as, to reply, he replied ; to 
deny, it was denied. But if the y be preceded by a 
vov/el, ed is added to the y in the usual manner ; as, to 
delay, he delayed. — IV. The active participle, which 
always ends in iny, is in general formed by simply adding 
the ing to the Infinitive ; as, to \nork, workiny / to talk, 
talking. But if the Infinitive end in a single e, the e is 



64 Etymology 

dropped ; as, to move, tnomng. The Verb to he is an ex- 
ception to this ; but then that is an irregular Verb. It is 

Say silent e, and the rule will hold good throughout. The 
e is not silent in he, and is therefore not dropped in hdng. It is 
never retained, even where one part of speech is converted into 
another, except where the omission of it might cause a doubtful 
pronunciation; as, peace, peaceable; change, changeable. 

when the Infinitive ends in a single e, mind ; for if the e 
be double, the general rule is followed ; as, to free, freeing. 
When the infinitive ends in ie, those letters are changed 
into y in the forming of the active participle ; as, to lie, 
lying. — V. When the Infinitive ends in a single consonant, 
which has a single vowel immediately before it, the final 
consonant is doubled, not only in forming the active par- 
ticiple, but also in forming the past time of the Indicative, 
and the passive participle ; as, to rap, rapping ; I rapped, 
it was rapped. But, observe well, this rule holds good 
only as to words of o7ie syllable y for if the Infinitive of 
the Verb have more than one syllable, the consonant is 
not doubled unless the accent he on the last syllable; and 
the accent means the main force, weight, or sound of 
the voice iu pronouncing the word. For instance, in the 
word to open, the accent is on the Jirst syllable ; and 
therefore we write, opening, opened. But when we come 
to the Verb to refer, where we find the accent on the last 
syllable, we write, referring, referred. 

It is, perhaps, worth while noticing that these are principles 
that apply not only to the verbs, but to various other parts Of 
speech ; in fact, principles that run through the whole language. 
Just as, with nouns, the word ending in y preceded by a consonant 
changes the y into ie (lady, ladies), but does not change the y if 
preceded by a vowel (valley, valleys) ; so with verbs, I carry, he 
carries; I obey, he obeys; so with adjectives, happy, happier; gay, 
gayer. And as we have seen that adjectives of one syllable, ending 
in a consonant preceded by a single vowel double the consonant in 
the comparative and superlative degrees (hot, hotter, hottest), but 
do not do so if preceded by a double vowel or by none at all (neat, 
neater ; rich, richer), so it is with verbs, of similar ending, in the 



Of Verhs. G5 

past tenso and in the participles, rap, rapped, rapping; cheat, 
cheated, cheating; work, worked, working. It is something that 
is demanded by the pronunciation of the words ; for if we did not 
dou])le the final consonant in words of this kind, we should have 
to say Ko'ter instead of hot'ter, raping instead of rapping. And 
this reminds me to say that it is of the utmost importance for you 
to study and understand the marking and accentuation of words 
in tlie dictionary; for if you wish to pronounce the English 
language correctly, you will find it necessary to consult tlie dic- 
tionary very frequently. The most learned Englishman or Ameri- 
can that lives, or has ever lived — not excepting Doctor Johnson or 
Noixli Webster himself— is, or has been, constantly obliged to con- 
sult the dictionary for the correct pronunciation of English words. 
How different, in this respect, is the German language! In that 
language there is but one single word irregularly pronounced; 
le-ben'-dig, instead of le'-ben-dig, like le'ben. And as to the mean- 
ing, every German word explains itself ; so that no German boy or 
man need ever look into a dictionary to find out the meaning or 
the pronunciation of a word in his language. Every word in that 
language is spelled, too, as it is pronounced. But the gram- 
matical construction of that language is far more difficult than 
ours. Mr. White confesses that, in order to learn German, the 
grammar of the language must be studied. I will go so far as to 
say, that an Englishman or American who studies the grammar of 
that language thoroughly well, will never need much further study 
of the grammar of his mother-tongue. 

106. These iiTegularities, though very necessary to be 
attended to, do not prevent us from considering the 
Verbs which are subject to them as regular Verbs. The 
mark of a regular Verb is that its^:)^^^ ^zwie ^xl^ passive 
participle end in ed ; every Verb which does not answer 
to this mark is irregular. 

107. There are many of these irregular Verbs, of 
which I shall here insert a complete Hst. All the iiTeg- 
ularities (except the little irregulai'ities just mentioned) 
which it is possible to find in an English Verb (the auxil- 
iary Verbs excepted) are in the past time and the^iassive 
participle only. Therefore, it will be sufficient to give a 
list, showing, in those two instances, what ai'e the irreg- 
vilarities of each Verb ; and, in order to render this list 



66 



Mtymology 



convenient, and to shorten the work of referring to it, I 
shall make it alphabetical. "With the past time and the 
passive participle of the several Verbs I shall use the first 
person singular of the pronoun, in order to make my 
examples as clear as possible. 

LIST OF IRKEGULAR VERBS. 



INFINITrSTE. 


PAST TIME. 


PARTICIPLES. 


to abide, 


I abode. 


I have abode. 


to be, 


I was. 


a 


been. 


to bear. 


I bore. 


a 


borne. 


to beat. 


I beat, 


u 


beaten. 


to become. 


I became. 


a 


become. 


to befall. 


it befell, 


it has befallen. 


to beget, 


I begot. 


I have 


1 begotten. 


to begin. 


I began, 


u 


begun. 


to behold. 


I beheld. 


11 


beheld. 


to bend. 


I bended. 


a 


bent. 


to beseech. 


I besought. 


u 


besought. 


to bid, 


I bade. 


u 


bidden. 


to bind. 


I bound, 


u 


bovmd. 


to bite, 


I bit. 


u 


bitten. 


to bleed. 


I bled, 


li 


bled. 


to break. 


I broke. 


ii. 


broken. 


to breed. 


I bred, 


ii. 


bred. 


to bring. 


I brought. 


(C 


brought. 


to buy. 


I bought. 


ii 


bought. 


to catch. 


I caught. 


ii 


caught. 


to choose. 


I chose. 


ii 


chosen. 


to cleave. 


I clove. 


ii 


cloven. 


to come, 


I came. 


ii 


come. 


to cost, 


I cost. 


ii 


cost. 


to cut, 


I cut. 


11 


cut. 


to die. 


I died. 


ii 


died. 


to do. 


I did. 


ii 


done. 


to drink. 


I di'ank, 


ii 


drunk. 



Of Verbs. 



67 



INFINITIVE. 


PAST TIME. 


PARTICIPLES. 


to di-ive. 


I drove. 


I have driven. 


to eat. 


I ate, 


(( 


eaten. 


to fall, 


I fell, 


a 


fallen. 


to feed, 


I fed. 


a 


fed. 


to feel, 


I felt. 


a 


felt. 


to tight. 


I fought, 


li 


fought. 


to find. 


I found, 


11 


found. 


to flee. 


I fled. 


li 


fled. 


to fling. 


I flung. 


li 


flung. 


to fly. 


I flew. 


a 


flown. 


to forbeai'. 


I forbore, 


a 


forborne. 


to forbid. 


I forbade. 


it. 


forbidden. 


to forget. 


I forgot. 


li 


forgotten. 


to forgive. 


I forgave, 


li 


forgiven. 


to forsake, 


I forsook. 


li 


forsaken. 


to get, 


I got, 


li 


gotten. 


to give, 


I gave. 


ii 


given. 


to go. 


I went. 


11 


gone. 


to giind, 


I ground. 


11 


grovmd. 


to have, 


I had, 


li 


had. 


to heai-, 


I heard, 


11 


heard. 


to hide. 


I hid. 


li 


hidden. 


to hit, 


I hit, 


11 


hit. 


to hold. 


I held. 


li 


held. 


to hui't, 


I hiu't. 


11 


hurt. 


to keep, 


I kept, 


(( 


kept. 


to know. 


I knew, 


li 


known. 


to lay, 


I laid, 


11 


laid. 


to lead. 


lied. 


li 


led. 


to leave. 


I left. 


» 


left. 


to lend, 


I lent, 


11 


lent. 


to let. 


I let. 


it 


let. 


to lie. 


Hay, 


u 


lain. 


to lose, 


I lost, 


<( 


lost. 


to make, 


I made, 


« 


made. 



68 


Etymology 






INFINITIVE. 


PAST TIME. 


PAETIOIPLES. 


to meet, 


I met, 


I have met. 


to overcome, 


I overcame. 


ii. 


overcome. 


to overdo. 


I overdid. 


a 


overdone. 


to pay. 


I paid. 


11 


paid. 


to put. 


I put. 


u 


put. 


to read, 


I read, 


ii 


read. 


to rend. 


I rent, 


li 


rent. 


to ride, 


I rode. 


ii 


ridden. 


to ring. 


I rang, 


li 


rung. 


to rise, 


I rose, 


a 


risen. 


to run, 


I ran. 


u 


run. 


to say, 


I said. 


li 


said. 


to see, 


I saw. 


11 


seen. 


to seek, 


I sought, 


a 


sought. 


to sell. 


I sold, 


C( 


sold. 


to send, 


I sent. 


ii 


sent. 


to set. 


I set. 


11 


set. 


to shake. 


I shook. 


11 


shaken. 


to shear. 


I sheared. 


11 


shorn. 


to shed, 


I shed. 


li 


shed. 


to show, 


I showed. 


ii 


shown. 


to shrink. 


I shrank. 


a 


shrunk. 


to shoe. 


I shod. 


li 


shod. 


to shoot, 


I shot, 


11 


' shot. 


to shut. 


I shut. 


ii 


shut. 


to sing, 


I sang, 


ii 


sung. 


to sink, 


I sank. 


a 


sunk. 


to sit. 


I sat, 


a 


sat. 


to slay. 


I slew. 


(( 


slain. 


to sleep. 


I slept, 


ii 


slept. 


to slide. 


I slid, 


" 


slidden. 


to sht, 


I slit, 


11 


slit. 


to smite, 


I smote, 


11 


smitten. 


to speak. 


I spoke, 


(C 


spokeik. 


to speed, 


I sped, 


(( 


sped. 



Of Verbs. 



69 



INFINITIVE. 


PAST TIME. 


PARTICIPLES. 


to spend, 


I spent. 


I have spent. 


to spin, 


I span, 


u 


spvm. 


to spit, 


I spat. 


u 


spat. 


to spread, 


I spread, 


u 


spread. 


to stand, 


I stood, 


u 


stood. 


to steal, 


I stole. 


u 


stolen. 


to stick. 


I stuck, 


il 


stuck. 


to stink. 


I stunk. 


11 


stunk. 


to strike, 


I struck. 


a 


stricken. 


to swear, 


I swore, 


a 


sworn. 


to take. 


I took. 


u 


taken. 


to teach, 


I taught. 


a 


taught. 


to teal'. 


I tore, 


a 


torn. 


to tell, 


I told, 


(( 


told. 


to think. 


I thought. 


(( 


thought. 


to tread, 


I trod. 


u 


trodden. 


to luiderstand. 


I understood. 


u 


understood. 


to wear. 


I wore, 


a 


worn. 


to win, 


I won. 


(( 


won. 


to wind, 


I wound, 


u 


wound. 


to write. 


I wrote. 


it 


written. 



108. It is usual with grammai'ians to insert several 
Verbs in theu* I^ist of Irregulars which I have not 
inserted here. But I have, in the above list, placed 
every Verb in oiu* language which is really ii'regular. 
However, I vdW here subjoin a list of those Verbs which 
ai'e, by some gramniarians, reckoned iiTegular ; and then 
I will show you, not only that they are not ii'regular, 
strictly speaking, but that you ought by all means to use 
them in a regular form. 



70 



Etymology 



LIST OF VEKBS WHICH, BY SOME PERSONS, ARE ERRONEOUSLY 
DEEMED IRREGULARS. 



INFINITIVE. 

to awake, 
to bereave, 
to blow, 
to build, 
to bum, 
to burst, 
to cast, 
to chide, 
to cling, 
to creep, 
to crow, 
to curse, 
to dare, 
to deal, 
to dig, 
to dip, 
to draw, 
to dream, 
to dwell, 
to freeze, 
to geld, 
to gild, 
to gird, 
to grow, 
to bang, 
to help, 
to hew, 
to kneel, 
to knit, 
to lade, 
to leap, 
to light, 



PAST TIME. 

I awoke, 
I bereft, 
I blew, 
I bunt, 
I burnt, 
I bui'st, 
I cast, 
I chid, 
I clung, 
I crept, 
I crew, 
I curst, 
I dared, 
I dealt, 
I dug, 
I dipt, 
I drew, 
I dreamt, 
I dwelt, 
I froze, 
I gelt, 
I gilt, 
I girt, 
I grew, 
I hung, 
I helpt, 
I hewed, 
I knelt, 
I knit, 
I laded, 
I leaped, 
Hit, 



PAETIOIPLES. 


I have awaked. 


a 


bereft. 


u 


blown. 


ii 


built. 


ii 


burnt. 


u 


burst. 


ii 


cast. 


ii 


chidden. 


ii 


clung. 


ii 


crept. 


ii 


crowed. 


ii 


cm-st. 


ii 


dared. 


<c 


dealt. 


ii 


dug. 


ii 


dipt. 


ii 


drawn. 


^i 


dreamt. 


(( 


dwelt. 


t; 


frozen. 


u 


gelt. 


a 


gilt- 


u 


girt. 


ii 


grown. 


a 


hung. 


a 


helpt. 


u 


hewn. 


C( 


knelt. 


- 


knit. 


(( 


laden. 


(( 


leapt. 


ii 


lighted. 



Of Verbs. 



71 



INFINITIVE. 

to load, 
to mean, 
to mow, 
to overflow, 
to saw, 
to shave, 
to shi'ed, 
to shine, 
to sling, 
to slink, 
to sUp, 
to smell, 
to snow, 
to sow, 
to spell, 
to spUl, 
to spUt, 
to spring, 
to stamp, 
to sting, 
to strew, 
to strow, 
to stride, 
to string, 
to strip, 
to strive, 
to sweep, 
to swell, 
to swim, 
to swing, 
to thrive, 
to throw, 
to thrust, 
to wax, 
to weave, 



I loaded, 
I meant, 
I mowed, 
I overflowed, 
I sawed, 
I shaved, 
I shred, 
I shone, 
I sliing, 
I slunk, 
I slipt, 
I smelt, 
it snowed, 
I sowed, 
I spelt, 
I spilt, 
I split, 
I sprang, 
I stampt, 
I stung, 
I strewed, 
I strowed, 
I strode, 
I stning, 
I strij^t, 
I strove, 
I swept, 
I swelled, 
I swam, 
I s^wmg, 
I throve, 
I tlu-ew, 
I thrust, 
I waxed, 
I wove, 



PAUTICIII'LES. 

I have loaden or laden. 
I have meant. 
" mown. 
" overflown. 
" sawn. 
" shaven. 
" shred. 
" shone. 
" slung. 
" slunk. 
" slipt. 
" smelt. 
it has snown. 
I have sown, 
spelt, 
spilt, 
split. 
" sprung. 
" stampt. 
" stmig. 
" strewn. 
" strown. 
" stridden. 
" strung. 
" stript. 
'' striven. 
" swept. 
" swollen. 
'• swum. 
" swung. 
" thriven. 
" thrown. 
" thrust. 
" waxen. 
" woven. 



72 ^ Etymology 

INFINITIVE. PAST TIME. PAETIOIPLES. 

to weep, I wept, I have wept, 

to whip, I whipt, " whipt. 

109. The greater part of these verbs have becorae 
irregular by the bad practice of abbreviating or shorten- 
ing in writing. We are always given to cut our words 
short; and, with very few exceptions, you find people 
writing lov'd, tnov'd, waWd / instead of loved, moved, 
loalked. They wish to make the pen correspond with the 
tongue / but they ought not then to write the word the 
at full length, nor the word of, nor any other little word ; 
for scarcely ever are these words fully sounded in speak- 
ing. From lov''d, mov'd, icaWd, it is very easy to slide 
into lovt, niovt, walkt. And this has been the case with 
regard to curst, dealt, dwelt, leapt, helpt, and many others 
in the last inserted list. It is just as proper to sajjumpt, 
as it is to say leapt/ and just as proper to say walkt as 
either ; and thus we might go on, till the orthography of 
the whole language were changed. When the love of 
contraction came to operate on such Verbs as to burst and 
to light, it found such a clump of consonants already at the 
end of the words that it could add none. It could not en- 
able the organs even of English speech to pronounce 
burst'd, lighted. It therefore made really short work of it, 
and, dropping the last syllable altogether, wrote burst and 
light in the past time and passive participle. But is it not 
more harmonious, as well as more correct, to say, " the 
bubble is almost bursted,^^ than it is to say, " The bubble 
is almost bursts " And as to hang, is it not better to say 
hanged than hung f " I will be hanged if I do," is a very 
common phrase, and is it not better than it would be to 
say, " I will be hung if I do ? " Many of these Verbs, by 
being very difficult to contract, have, as in the case of to 
hang, to swing, and the like, reduced the shorteners to 
the necessity of changing almost all the letters of the 



Of Verbs. 73 

words ; as, to f7(trr, flumt ; but is it not better to say I 
dared than I durst ? This habit of contracting or short- 
ening is a very mischievous habit. It leads to the de- 
struction of all propriety in the use of letters ; and instead 
of a saving of time, it produces, by the puzzling that it 
gives rise to, a great loss of time. Hoping that what I 
have here said will be a wai'ning to you against the cutting 
of words short, I have only to add, on the subject of ir- 
regular verbs, that those in the last list are to be used in 
the regular form, and that the only real ii-regulars are 
those of the first list. Nay, I have, after all, left some 
Verbs in the first list which 7)iay be used in the regular 
form ; as, past, which may be, in the pai'ticiple, 2^<issed, and 
Avith full as much propriety. 

The fact that tliis second series of verbs, which Cobbett dechxres 
ought to be used in the reguhu- form, are now almost all used in 
that form, is a pretty good proof of the soundness of his judgment. 
There is a strong tendency now-a-days to make irregular verbs 
regular, as well as to make irregularly-pronounced words regular. 
Mr. White is singular in his notions on this subject. He dislikes all 
departures from old-established pronunciations ; calls them "book- 
talk, not free, manly speech." Thougli the people of the town of 
Derby, for instance, pronounce the name of their town just as it is 
spelled, he thinks the aristocratic pronunciation "Darby" is the 
proper one, because it has support in other words pronounced in the 
old st)de, such as dark for clerk, darcjy for dergy, sarjeant for serjeant. 
And 3'et he seems to agree with Walker that mirgin and mirtue 
instead of virgin and mrtue have "a grossness approaching to vul- 
garity ! " Is not the one just as bad as the other ? nay, worse ; for 
the i in these words, like that in third and girl, has, in everybody's 
mouth, something of the sound of the u. Ought we, in order 
to satisfy a peculiarity or nicety of taste, to retain an irregular 
pronunciation in particular words, which gives endless trouble to 
thousands of teachers and millions of children? I am all the more 
surprised at this peculiar notion of Mr. White's, as he seems willing 
to abolish every change in the ending of words in order to simplify 
the grammar : even the m in wJiom he is willing to discard. There is 
no use in talking about it; it is quite natural that a practical, pro- 
gressive, reading people like the Americans should pronounce 
words as they are spelled. We no longer hear housewife pro- 
4 



74 Mtymology 

nounced Tiuzzif, as in England ; or, haunt pronounced Jiant. Nor 
do I think there is any loss whatever, but a gain, in so pro- 
nouncing. "Derby" sounds just as good as "Darby;" "clerk" 
as good as "dark;" "Berkeley" as "Barkeley." 

Simplicity is, in fact, the order of the day ; it is the tendency of 
the age in all things ; for modern progress, modern ideas, are ren- 
dering all mankind more neighborly, more brotherly, more 
nearly akin to each other. Mr. White is inclined to think that 
those we call irregular verbs are the real strong ones, and the 
others the weak. I notice that my little girl, five years old, fre- 
quently makes irregular verbs regular (I drinked, I eated, etc.), 
although she never hears them so used. This to me is a proof 
that there is a natural tendency in the language to regularity of 
construction. And indeed there is a reason for this change, as for 
all changes, in our language — a satisfactory, a compensatory 
reason ; for most of the old irregular forms are needed for other 
and different service : they are wanted for qualificative and figura- 
tive use. Let us take some of these very verbs in the second list — 
to burn, to chide, to gild, to gird, to hew, to load, to shave, to 
spill, to weave — and we shall see that though used in the regular 
form as verbs, the ireegulak foem is itsed as adjectives. I 
burned the cork; here is burnt cork; — he chided the children; 
there they go, like a chidden train ; — she gilded the faces of the 
sleepers ; she wears gilt lace ; — ^he girded himself for the combat ; 
here is a sea-girt isle ; — he hewed the stone ; here is a temple built 
of hewn stone ; and so on. Though we speak of having worked 
hard, of having melted the ice, and of having swelled the tide of 
prosperity, yet we speak of wrought iron, of a swollen flood, and 
of molten lead. Though we say that ' ' she knitted the stockings " 
and "he freighted the vessel," we say that "her brows were knit" 
and "the enterprise was fraught with misfortune." Thus we see 
that the irregular form of the verb has been turned into an adjec- 
tive, and the regular form retained as a verb. 

The old form is also needed to form nouns as well as adjectives. 
' ' During the past year, he has often passed me without a glance ; 
but, never mind; the past is forgotten." And the old form is 
sometimes used to show a difference of meaning as compared with 
the regular form; for "he durst not do it" is quite a different 
thing from "he dared not do it;" the former indicating that he 
had not the permission to do it, and the latter that he had not the 
courage. — Having forgotten what Cobbett said above of the verb 
to pass, I struck it out of the list of irregulars, as it is never now 



Of Verbs. 75 

used irregularly. OtluTwisc I should have let it stand. It is, 
however, the only verb I did strike out. 

110. Auxiliary Veebs. — In the present Letter, para- 
graph 103, I opened this part of ray subject. The word 
let is the past time and the passive participle of the Verb 
to let. It is used as an auxihary, however, in the present 
time; and only in the impefative mode/ as, Z^et me go/ 
let us go/ let h Im go. That is to say. Leave me to go, 
leave us to go, leave him to go. Perhaps the meaning, 
fullg expressed, would be, Act in such a way that I may 
be left to go, or sufiered to go. 

The peculiarity of this verb to let is, that like a dozen other irreg- 
ular verbs, it may be used in all the tenses without undergoing any 
change of form ; as, I let him come now ; I let him come yesterday ; 
I have let him come. I put it away now ; I put it away yesterday; 
I have put it away. So with cut, cast, hit, and others. 

111. The auxiliary do, which, for the past time, be- 
comes did, is pai't of the Verb to do, which in its past 
time is did, and in its passive participle done. In this 
sense, it is not an auxiliary, but a princij^al Verb, and its 
meaning is equal to that of to execute, or to perform/ as, 
I do my work, I execute my worJc, I perform my loork. 
As an auxiliaiy or helper, it seems to denote the time of 
the piincipal Verb ; as, I do wallc ; I did walk ; and, we 
may say, I do execute my xoork, or, I do do my work. In 
this last example, the fii'st do is an auxiliary, and the last 
do a piincipal Verb. However, as I said before, do and 
did, used as auxihai-ies, do a gi-eat deal more than merely 
express time. In fact, they are not often used for that 
pui-pose only. They are used for the pui'j)Ose of aflSi'ming 
or denying in a manner peculiarly strong ; as, I do work, 
means, that I work, notwithstanding all that may be, or 
may have been said, or thought, to the contrary; or it 
means, that I work noio, and have not done it at some 
other stated or supposed time. It is the same, with the 
exception of time, as to the use of did. These ai'e 



76 Etymology 

amongst those little words of vast import, tlie proper 
force and use of which foreigners scarcely ever learn, and 
which we learn from our very infancy. 

This is, I think, the proper place to state that the English verb 
has, in fact, jive forms in the present tense — something which, I 
believe, is not found in the verbs of any other modern tongue : 

He works, common form. 

He is working, progressive form. 

He does work, emphatic form. 

He worketh, solemn form. 

He doth work, solemn emphatic form. 

All these forms convey a different shade of meaning, and are 
used under different circumstances, which will be explained by- 
and-by. I will only say here that the first three are the most fre- 
quently used. The French and the Germans have only one form 
for the whole five : il travaille, er arbeitet. They have, it is true, 
the progressive form, too, but it is seldom used by the French and 
hardly ever by the Germans. 

Now, concerning do, you must notice that, as an auxiliary, it is 
used chiefly in negative and inteeeogative sentences : 

He works, he is working, affirmative. 

He does not work, negative. 

Does he work ? interrogative. 
It is never used in aflirmative sentences except for emphasis. 
The French and the Germans, for the last two forms, simply say : 
He works not, Works he ? We use this form when we speak sol- 
emnly or earnestly : He works not ; He comes not ; I see him not. 
Notice that when any other auxiliary is used (have, be, must, may, 
etc.), we cannot use do in either negative or interrogative sentences : 
" I have not seen him. He must not go. Am I your friend ? May 
I speak?" To say, therefore, " I did not have a penny," is not so 
good as, "I had not a penny." 

112. The Verbs to have and to he are the two great 
auxiliaries. These words demand an extraordinary por- 
tion of your attention. They are principal Verbs as well 
as auxiliaries. The Verb to have, as a principal Verb, 
signifies possession • as, I have a pen, that is to say, I 
possess a pen. Then, this is a word of very great use in- 
deed in its capacity of principal Verb ; for we say, I have 
a headache, I have a hatred of such a thing, I have a 



Of Verbs. 77 

viind to go ; and hunch'eds of similar phi'ases. 1 possess 
a beadaclie lias the same ineanhig ; but the other is more 
agi'eeable to the natiu'al turn of ovu.' language. As aux 
iliary, this Verb is absolutely necessary in forming what 
ai'G called the conqyoimcl times of other Verbs, and those 
times ai'e called compound because they are formed of two 
or iNore Verbs. Suppose the subject to be of mi/ tcorking, 
and that I want to tell you that my work is ended., that I 
have closed my work, I cannot, in a short mamier, tell you 
this without the help of the Verb to have. To say, I work, 
or I worked, or I will vxrrk ; these will not answer my 
piu'pose. No : I must call in the help of the Verb to have, 
and tell you I have worked. So, in the case of the past 
time, I must say, I had worked; in the futui-e, I shall 
A«ye worked; in the subjunctive mode, I must say, I may, 
might, could, or should have worked. If you reflect a 
little, you will find a clear reason for employing the Verb 
to have in this way; for when I say, "I have worked,'' my 
words amotmt to this : that the act of viorking is now in 
my 2)ossession. It is completed. It is a thing I oion, and 
therefore I say, I have it. 

113. The Verb to be signifies existence, when used as a 
principal Verb. " To be ill, to be well, to be rich, to be 
poor," mean to exist in illness, in health, in riches, in pov- 
erty. This Verb, in its compound times, requires the help 
of the Verb to have ; as, I have been, I had been, I shall 
have been, and so on. As auxiliary, this Verb is used 
with the 2)ctrticiples of other Verbs; as, to be tcorking, he 
is working, it is worked. Now you will perceive, if you 
reflect, that these phi'ases mean as follows: existing in 
work, he exists in tcork, it exists in a loorked state. Both 
these Verbs are sometimes used, at one and the same 
time, as auxiliaiies to other principal Verbs/ as, J have 
been writing j I have been imj)risoned ; and so on; and, 
upon patient attention to what has ah'eady been said, you 
will find that they retain upon all occasions their full 



78 



Mtymology 



meaning, of possession in tlie one case, and of existence in 
the other. 

114. Now, my dear James, if I have succeeded in mak- 
ing clear to jo\i the principle out of which the use of 
these words, as auxiliaries, has arisen, I have accomplished 
a great deal ; for, if well grounded in that principle^ all 
the subsequent difficulties will speedily vanish before you. 

115. I now proceed to close this long and important 
Letter, by presenting to you the conjugation of these two 
Verbs, both of which are irregular, and every irregularity 
is worthy of your strict attention. 



Present 
Time. 



Past 
Time. 



Future 
Time. 



Present 
Time. 



Singular. 
/-1st Person 
-s2d Person 
(Sd Person. 



INFINITIVE MODE. 

To Have. 
INDICATIVE MODE. 

Plural. 
. I have, We liave. 

. Thou hast, You have. 

. He, she, or it has They have, 
or hath], We had. 



/ — I had, 
•< — Thou hadst, 
( — He, she or it had, 
^ — I shall, or will have, 
•< — Thou shalt, or wilt have, 
*- — He, she, or it shall or will 
have], 



You had. 

They had. 

We shall, or will have. 

You shall, or will have. 

They shall, or will have. 



SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. 

f If I have, or may, might, could, or should have. 

I If thou have, or may " " " have. 

J If he, she, or it have, or may ' ' have. 

I If we have, or may " " have; 

I If you have, or may " " have. 

Lif they have, or may " " have. 

IMPERATIVE MODE. 
Let me have, Let us have. 

Have thou, Have you. 

Let him, her, or it have, Let them have. 



Of Verbs. 



79 



PARTICIPLES. 
Active. — Having. 
Passive. — Had. 

116. Though I have inserted hath in the third person 
singular of the present of the indicative, it is hardly ever 
used. It is out of date, and ought to be wholly laid 
aside. 

117. The Verb to be is still more iii-egular, but a Httle 
attention to its iiTegulai'ities will prevent all errors ia the 
use of it. 



Present 
Time. 



Past 
Time. 



Future 
Time. 



IKFmiTIVE MODE. 

To Be. 
INDICATIVE MODE. 



Singular. 
/-1st Person. 
- 2d Person. 
(3d Person. 



I am, 

Thou art, 

He, she, or it is, 



r — I was, 

Thou wast, 

( — He, slic, or it was, 
^ — I shall, or will be, 
-' — Thou shalt, •or wilt be. 



Plural. 
We are. 
You are. 
They are. 
We were. 
You were. 
They were. 
We shall, or will be. 
You sliall, or will be. 



< — 1 iiou suaii,»or wui oe, ion siiau, or wui oe 

( — He, she, or it shall, or will be. They shall, or will be 



SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. 

f If I be, or may, might, would, could, or should be. 

I If tliou be, or may " " " " be. 

Present J If he, she, or it be, or may " " be. 

Time. , jf ^g jjc, or may " " "be. 

I If you be, or may " " "be. 

L If they be, or may " " " be. 

f If I were. 
If thou were. 

Past Time. \ " ''''' ^''^' "•' '^ ^«'■^• 
I If we were. 

I If you Avere. 

Lif they were. 



80 Etymology 

IMPERATIVE MODE. 
Let me be, Let us be. 

Be thou, Be you. 

Let Mm, her, or it, be, Let them be. 

PARTICIPLES. 

Present. — Being. 
Past. — Been. 

118. In the Subjunctive Mode I have made use of 
the conjunction if throughout all the conjugations of 
Verbs. But a Verb may be in that mode v^^ithout an if 
before it. The if is only one of the marks of that mode. 
A Verb is always in that mode when the action or state of 
heing expressed by the Verb is expressed conditionally, 
or when the action or state of being is, in some way or 
other, dependent on some other action or state of being. 
But of this I shall speak more at large when I come to 
the Syntax of Verbs. 

119. There remain a few words to be said about the 
signs, the defective Verbs, and the impersonal Verbs. The 
signs, may, might, can, coidd, toill, wozdd, shall, shoidd, 
and must, have all, originally, been Verbs, though they 
are now become defective in almost all their parts, and 
serve only as signs to other Verbs. Will, indeed, is part 
of a regular Verb ; as, to vnll, they loilled, they are vnlling, 
they icill be loilling. The word woidd is certainly the 
past time and passive participle of the same Verb ; and, 
indeed, it is used as a principal Verb now, in certain cases ; 
as, " I woidd he were rich.'" That is to say, I desire, or 
am willing, or, it is my vnll, that he shoidd be rich. But 
deep inquuies regarding the origin of these words are 
more curious than useful. A mere idea of the nature of 
their origin is enough. The Verb ought is a Verb de- 
fective, in most of its parts. It certainly, however, is no 
other than a part of the Verb to owe, and is become ought 
by corruption. For instance ; " I ought to write to you," 



Of Verbs. 81 

means that " I owe the performance of the act of writing 
to you." Ought is made use of only in the present time, 
and for that reason a great deal has been lost to oiu' lan- 
guage by this corruption. As to the Verbs which some 
grammai'ians have called impersonal, there are, in fact, no 
such things in the English language. By impersonal 
Verb is meant a Yerb that has no noun or pronoun for its 
nominative case ; no person or thing that is the actor, or 
receiver of an action, or that is in being. Thus: "it 
rains,'' is by some called an in/personal Verb; but the 
pronoun it represents the person. Look again at Letter 
VT, and at pai'agraphs 60 and 61. You will there find 
what it is that this it, in such cases, represents. 

120. Thus I have concluded my Letter on the Ety- 
mology of Verbs, which is by far the most important part 
of the subject. Great as have been my endeavors to 
make the matter clear to you, I am aware, that, after the 
frst reading of this Letter, yoiu- mind will be greatly 
confused. You will have had a glimpse at everything in 
the Letter, but will have seen nothing cleaiiy. But, my 
dear James, lay the book aside for a day or twQ ; then 
read the whole Letter again and again. Bead it early, 
while yoiu* mind is cleai-, and while sluggai'ds are snoiing. 
"Write it down. Lay it aside for another day or two. 
Copy your own wiiting. Think as you proceed ; and, at 
the end of your copying, you will understand cleai'ly all 
the contents of the Letter. Do not attempt to stvidy the 
Letter piece by piece. In your- readings, as well as in 
your copyings, go clean throughout. If you follow these 
instructions, the remaining part of yoiu' task will be very 
easy and pleasant. 

As to this last piece of advice, I cannot agree with Cobbett. 
Reading the whole letter at once is the very way to get a confused 
impression of the whole subject; just as going through a wliole 
museum at once leaves a confused impression of cverytiiing and a 
distinct impression of nothing. No ; go through one roomful of 



82 



Etymology 



curiosities at one visit ; master the whole collection step by step ; 
and when you have got it pretty clear in your mind, then you may 
go over it all at one run. 

To complete this, the most important part of etymology, I must 
give you a full view of a passive verb, or rather of a verb in the 
passive voice. Just devote one little half -hour to it in the early 
morning, when your mind is fresh ; and you will see its nature 
clearly ; compare it with the same verb in the active voice, and 
you will get a fair idea of what a verb in the passive voice is. 
For, to make the matter all the more plain, I see no reason why 
this same verb to work, which I have given you in the active voice, 
should not be given in the passive, too ; for we often say. He is 
worked to death; the mine was well worked; the problem has been 
worked out, and so on. Besides — and this is a secret which every 
school-boy does not know — there must, in the conjugation of every 
passive verb, be displayed a complete conjugation of the verb to be; 
so here we kill two birds with one stone. 

Complete Conjugation of the Passive Verb To be worked : 



INFINITIVE MOOD. 



SIMPLE TENSES. 

Present tense. 
To be worked. 



COMPOUND TENSES. 

Present perfect tense. 
To have been worked. 



INDICATIVE MOOD. 



Present tense. 
I am worked, 
Thou art worked. 
He is " 

We are " 

You are " 
They are " 

Past tense. 
I was worked, 
Thou wast worked, 
He was " 

We were " 

You were " 
They were " 

Simple future tense. 
I shall be worked, 
Thou wilt be worked, 
He will be " 

We shall be " 
You will be " 
They will be " 

Present conditional form. 
I should be worked, 
Thou wouldst be worked, 
He would be " 

We should be " 

You would be " 

They would be " 



Present perfect tense, 
I have been worked. 
Thou hast been worked. 
He has been " 

We have been " 
You have been " 
They have been " 

Past perfect tense. 
I had been worked. 
Thou hadst been worked. 
He had been " 

We had been " 

You had been " 

They had been " 

Perfect future tense. 
I shall have been worked. 
Thou wilt have been worked. 
He will have been " 

We shall have been " 
You will have been , " 
They will have been " 

Perfect conditional form. 
I should have been worked. 
Thou wouldst have been worked. 
He would have been " 

We should have been " 

You would have been " 

They would have been " 



Of Adverbs. 



83 



POTENTIAL MOOD. 



Prestnt («nee. 
I may be worked, 
Thou mayst be worked, 
He may be " 

We may be " 

You may bo " 

They may be " 

Poft tense. 
I miffht be worked. 
Thou mightst be worked, 
He mipht be " 

We might be " 

You mTght be " 

They might be " 



Present perfect t^nse. 
I may have been worked. 
Thou mayst have been worked. 
He may have been " 

We may have been " 

You may have been " 

They may have been " 

Past perfect tense. 
I might have been worked. 
Thou mightst have been worked. 
He might have been " 

We might have been " 

You iBi^ht have been " 

They might have been " 



SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD. 



Present tense. 
If I be worked, 

thou be worked, 

he be " 

we be " 

you be " 

they be " 

Past tense. 
If I were worked, 

thou were worked, 

he were " 

we were " 

you were " 

they were " 



Be worked. 



Present perfect tense. 
If I have been worked. 

thou have been worked. 

he have been " 

we have been " 

you have been " 

they have been " 

Past perfect tense. 
If I had been worked. 

thou had been " 

he had been " 

we had been " 

you had been " 

they had been " 



IMPERATIVE MOOD, 
or. 



Be thou worked. 



PARTICIPLES. 
/Ve»en<— Being worked, Past—Saying been worked. 



LETTER IX. 



ETYMOLOGY OF ADVEEBS. 

121. In Letter HI, and in jDaxagraphs 27 and 28, you 
will find a description of this Part of Sjpeech. Read 
again those two paiagraphs, in order to refresh yoiu* 
memory. There is not much to be said about Adverbs 
under the head of Etymology. They are words hable to 
few variations. Adverbs are very numerous, and may be 
divided into five principal classes : that is to say, Adverbs 
of ti)ne, of place, of order, of quality, and of manner. 



84 Etymology 

This last class, wliicli is the most numerous, is composed of 
those which are derived immediately from adjectives, and 
which end in ly; as, especially, particularly, thanJcfully. 

122. These Adverbs, ending in ly, are, for the most 
part, formed by simply adding ly to the adjective ; as, es- 
pecial becomes especially; but if the adjective end in y, 
that y is changed into i in forming the Adverb ; as, happy, 
happily ; steady, steadily. If the adjective end in le, 
the e is dropped in forming the Adverb; as, possible, 
possibly. 

123* Some few Adverbs have degrees of comparison; 
as, often, oftener, oftenest; and those which are derived 
from irregular adjectives are irregular in forming their 
degrees of comparison ; as, loell, better, best. 

124. Some Adverbs are simple or single ; others com- 
pound. The former consist of one word, the latter of 
two or more words ; as, happily ; at present ; now-a-days ; 
which last means at the days that now are. Another Ad- 
verb of this description is, by-and-by ; which is used to 
express, in a short time ; and literally it means near and 
near ; because by itself, as an Adverb, means 7iear, close, 
beside. When Adverbs are compound, the words com- 
posing them ought to be connected by a hyphen, or 
hyphens, as in the above examples of now-a-days and 
by-and-by. 

I must here explain to you two important things, of which Cob- 
bett makes no mention : the phease and the olatise. In the sen- 
tence, "1 shall return immediately,^'' the word immediately is 
simply an adverb of time, modifying the verb shall return; but 
when I change the adverb into several words, as, "I shall return in 
an instant,'''' it becomes a phease, an adverbial phrase. Phrases are 
used to express all that adverbs are used to express, and nearly all 
adverbs can be turned into adverbial phrases. The adverb now 
may be changed into at this moment or at present; beautifully may 
be rendered by in a beautiful manner ; here may be turned into at 
this place; in a quiet way loa&j he rendered tj quietly ;, and so on. 
And here I must show you that there are many cases where we 



Of Adverbs. 85 

prefer the adverbial phva^ to the adverb. To what part of speech 
ihi you think the words silly, ki/ulli/, fne/uUy, belong? They look 
like adverbs, do they not? But they are not, as you will find by 
trial: a silly boy, a kindly gentleman, a friendly lad}'. Shall I 
then say. The boy speaks sillily? The gentleman acts kindlilj'? 
The lady received us friendlily? These expressions are not abso- 
lutely incorrect; they arc better than with the adjective. The boy 
speaks silly, etc. ; but they do not sound agreeable ; so we prefer 
the adverbial piikase : The boy speaks in a silly manner ; the gen- 
tleman acts in a kindly manner ; the lady received us in afidendly 
manner, or in a friendly way. Observe, too, that you ought never 
to put a preposition before an adverb of place ; as, to here, from 
thei'e. You must use a phrase, and say, to this place, from that 
city, etc., always naming the place referred to. Never any from 
w/ience, from thence ; but simply whence, thence. 

Now for the clause. The diflf ei'ence between the phrase and the 
clause is this: the clause always has a subject and predicate (nom- 
inative and verb), the phrase never has either. " I shall return 
w7ien I please.''^ Here, instead of the phrase in an instant, we have 
an assertion, with subject (I) and predicate (please), which cannot 
be changed for a single word. This is called an adverbial clause; 
adverbial because it modifies the verb of the first clause ; for the 
sentence now contains two clauses, and is changed from a simple 
into a complex sentence. Every sentence must have at least one 
clause, while there may not be a single phrase in ten consecutive 
sentences. A clause may be not only adverbial, but objective, 
participial, infinitive, or relative. "He asked what J was doing, ''^ 
objective clause ; "He came in as I was going aioay," participial 
clause; " He wants to see what will come of it,'''' infinitive clause; 
"The boy who learns English is my son," relative clause; and 
so on. 01)serve tlie following three examples, and you will sec 
how the adverb may be turned into an adverbial phrase, and the 
latter into an adverbial clause: 

Speak distinctly. 

Speak in a distinct manner. 

Speak so tluit you may be understood. 
It is worth noticing that some adverbs help to join clauses as well 
as to express time ov place, and are therefore called conjunctive ad- 
verbs: 1 shall return wlien he returns. I will tell you where we are 
going. Others, again, express negation, afiirination, or cause, 
and are called adverbs of negation, of afiirmation, or of cause; as, 
(1) no, not, neve>'; (2) yea, yea, truly, certainly ; (3) why, wlierefore^ 



86 Etymology 

fkerefore. No, coming immediately before a noun, is, of course, an 
adjective ; as, No person under 25 years of age can become a mem- 
ber of Congress. Observe that all adverbs ending in ly are com- 
pared with more and most, or less and least; as, handsomely, more 
handsomely, most handsomely; — handsomely, less handsomely, 
least handsomely. Do you remember the names of these three 
degrees ? 



LETTER X. 

ETYMOLOGY OF PREPOSITIONS. 

125. Letter III, paragraphs 29 and 30, has taught you 
of what description of words Prepositions are. The 
chief use of them is to express the different relations or 
connections which nouns have with each other, or in 
which nouns stand with regard to each other ; as, John 
gives money to Peter; Peter receives money frorn John. 
It is useless to attempt to go into curious inquiries as to 
the origin of Prepositions. They never change their 
endings; they are always written in the same manner. 
Their tise is the main thing to be considered ; and that 
will become very clear to you, when you come to the 
Syntax. 

126. There are two abbreviations, or shortenings, of 
Prepositions, which I will notice here, because they are 
in constant use, and may excite doubts in your mind. 
These are a and o' / as, I am a hunting ; he is « coming ; 
it is one o'clock. The a thus added is at, without doubt; 
as, I am at hunting ; he is at coming. Generally this is 
a vulgar and redundant manner of speaking ; but it is in 
use. In mercantile accounts you will frequently see this 
a made use of in a very odd sort of way ; as, " Six bales 
marked 1 a 6." The merchant means, " Six bales marked 
from 1 to 6." But this I take to be a relic of the Norman 
French, which was once the law and mercantile language 



Of Prepositions. 87 

of Englaiul ; for, in French, a with an accent, means t<> or 
at. I wonder that merchants, who are generally men of 
sound sense, do not discontinue the use of this mark of 
affectation. And, I beg you, my dear James, to bear in 
mind, that the only use of words is to cause our meaning 
to he cledrhj understood ; and that the best words are 
those which are famihar to the ears of the greatest num- 
ber of persons. The o' with the mark of elision means 
of, or of the, or on, or on the ; as, two o'clock, which is the 
same as to say two of the clock, or two according to the 
clock, or two on the clock. 

127. As to the Prepositions which are joined to verbs 
or other words ; as, to outlive, to undervalue, to be over- 
done, it Avould be to waste our time to spend it in any 
statements about them; for these ai'e otJter vjords than 
to live, to value, to be done. If we were to go, in this 
way, into tiie subject of the comjyosition of words, where 
should we stop? Thank/V^7, thankless, ^\ith.t)ut, withi;i/ 
these are all compound words, l)ut, of what use to us to 
enter on, and sjieud our time in, inquirie.-5 of mere curio- 
sity? It is for monks and for Fellows of English colleges, 
who hve by the sweat of other people's brows, to spend 
theu' time in this mannei', and to call the result of theii- 
studies learning/ for you, who will have to earn what 
you eat and what you drink and what you wear, it is to 
avoid everything that tends not to real utility. 

It vaay, however, not l)e quite useless to mention tlie names 
given to the parts of deriv'cd words. Kind, Tin-kind, kind-ness. 
The original word is called tlic rout; the syllable placed before the 
root is called the jirefix ; and the syllable added to the root is 
called the suffix. Although any word having a prefix or a suffix 
may be called a compound word, we generally call those words 
compound which are formed by imiting two or more whole words; 
as, workshoji, schoolmaster, army-chest. And as to which com- 
pound words take a hyphen, and which do not, this depends a 
good deal upon the shape of the first and the last letter of the two 
words united. For instance, churchyard needs no hyphen, because 



88 Etymology 

the two parts are sufficiently separated by the ascending Ji and the 
descending y ; but cliurch-bell or church-liymn must be so separated, 
because the parts of the word would otherwise not be sufficiently 
distinct. 

As to the correct use of prepositions generally, there is no guide 
equal to the feeling for propriety acquired by much reading and 
speaking, and by frequent hearing of good speakers. Well do I 
remember that, among my most advanced scholars in Germany, 
almost the only mistake they finally made was in the use of the 
prepositions, showing that this was the last difficulty to be mas- 
tered. It was sometimes a matter so peculiar, so delicate, so diffi- 
cult to choose the right preposition, that I was myself obliged to 
repeat a sentence aloud several times before I could hit on the 
right word. 

Do not forget that the pi'eposition governs the objective case — I 
send for him — nor that the same word may sometimes belong to 
another part of speech : I send for him, for I cannot do without 
him. Notice that people are said to be in any place, but that they 
go into a place. We are in the garden , we are going into the ■ 
house. In the Broadway stages there stands, over ^he fare-box, 
this sentence : " Put the exact fare in the box." It should be ««.fo 
the box ; for, though the money may be in the box, it is put into 
it. — Do not suppose that every preposition must be a little word ; 
for concerning^ respecting^ regarding, notwithstanding are also prepo- 
sitrons. Observe, too, that nine plirases out of ten begin with a 
preposition. 

In regard to the expressions, a-hunting, a-coming, and the like, 
Cobbett does not mean that these are vulgar and redundant, — 
which is what, at first, I thought he meant, — but that at hunting, 
at coming, are so. The other expression is perfectly legitimate, 
and used by the best authors. You may say, therefore, that some- 
thing or anything is a-doing, a-making, a-building, a-ripening, 
a-brewing, and so on. 



Of Co7^ju7ictions. 89 



LETTER XI. 

ETYMOLOGY OF CONJUNCTIONS. 

128. In Letter HI, pai'agraph 31, you have had a de- 
scription of this sort of words, and also some account of 
the uses of them. Some of them ai'e called copulative 
Conjunctions, and others disjunctive. They all serve to 
join together words, or parts of sentences ; but the for- 
mer express an icnion in the actions, or states of being, 
expressed by the verb ; as, you and I talk. The latter a 
disunion; as, you talk, hut I act. The words of this 
Part of Speech never vary in their endings. They are 
always spelled in one and the same way. In themselves 
they present no difficulty ; but, as you will see by-and-by, 
to use them properly, with other words, in the forming 
of sentences, demands a due portion of your attention 
and care. 

You see Cobbett says "an union." Can yoii tell why this is 
wrong ? If not, look at Letter IV, paragraph 36 (note). 



LETTER XII. 

cautionary remakks. 

My dear James : 

129. Before we enter on Syntax, let me give you a 
caution or two with regard to the contents of the forego- 
ing Letters. 

130. There are some words which, under different cir- 
cumstances belong to more than one Pai't of Speech, as, • 
indeed, you have seen in the J-*a7'ticiples. But this is by 
no means confined to that pai'ticular description of words. 



90 Cautionary JRemarJcs. 

I act. Here act is a verb ; but "the act performed by me" 
shows the very same word in the capacity of a noiin. The 
message was sent hy him ; he stood by at the time. In 
the first of these examples hy is a preposition ; in the last 
an adverb. Mind, therefore, that it is the sense in which 
the loord is used, and not the letters of which it is com- 
posed, that determines what is the Part of Speech to 
which it belongs. 

131. Never attempt to get by rote any part of yoiu* in- 
structions. Whoever falls into that practice soon begins 
to esteem the powers of memory more than those of rea- 
son ; and the former are despicable indeed when com- 
pared with the latter. "When the fond parents of an 
eighth wonder of the world call him forth into the middle 
of the parlor to repeat to their visitors some speech of a 
play, how angry would they be if any one were to tell 
them that their son's endowments equalled those of a 
parrot or a bullfinch ! Yet a German bird-teacher would 
make either of these more perfect in this species of 
oratory. It is this mode of teaching, which is practised 
in the great schools, that assists very much in making 
dunces of lords and country squires. They '•'' get their 
lessons ,•" that is to say, they repeat the toords of it ; but, 
as to its sense and meaning, they seldom have any under- 

, standing. This operation is sometimes, for what reason 
I know not, called gettiag a thing by heart. It must, I 
should think, mean by hearH ; that is to say, by hear it. 
That a person may get and retain and repeat a lesson in 
this way, without any effort of the mind, is very clear 
from the fact, of which we have daily proof, that people 
sing the words and the tune of a song with perfect cor- 
rectness, at the very time that they are most seriously 
thinking and debating in their minds about matters of 

* great importance to them. 

132. I have cautioned you before against studying the 
foregoing instructions piecemeal; that is to say, a little 



Cautionary Memarks. 91 

hit at a time. Read a letter all through at once ; and, 
now that you have come to the end of my instructions on 
Etymology, read all the Letters thi'ough at once : do this 
repeatedly; taking care to proceed slowly and carefully; 
and, at the end of a few days, all the matters treated of 
will form a connected whole in yovu* mind. 

133. Before you pi'oceed to the Syntax, try yourself a 
little, thus : Copy a short sentence from any book. Then 
wi'ite down the words, one by one, and write against each 
what Part of Speech you think it belongs to. Then look 
for each word in the dictionaiy, where you will find the 
several Pai'ts of Speech denoted by little letters after the 
word : s. is for substantive, or noun ; pro. for pronoun ; 
a. for ai'ticle ; v. a. for verb active ; v. n. for verb neuter ; 
adj. for adjective; adv. for adverb; /> re. for preposition; 
con. for conjimction; i7it. for interjection. It will give 
you great pleasiu'e and encoui'agement when you find that 
you are right. If you be sometimes wrong, this will only 
urge you to renewed exertion. You will be proud to see 
that, without any one at your elbow, you have really 
acquired something which you can never lose. You Avill 
begin, and with reason, to think yourself learned; your 
sight, though the objects will still appear a good deal 
confused, will dart into every part of the science ; and 
you will pant to complete what you will be convinced you 
have successfully begun. 

This is Mr. White's mucli-ridiculcd and thoroughly-despised 
parsing exercise. Of com-se, carried on as it is at the public- 
schools, with little or no real understanding of the matter, and 
with a kind of rapid, mechanical, parrot-like repetition of gram- 
matical terms, it is worse than useless. But I am convinced 
that, properly considered, and understandingly carried out, this 
exercise is of positive value. To a boy or girl of proper age, it 
may be made indeed, tolerably interesting. Let us look at a 
single little sentence. " Boys love swimming." 

Bayn is a common noun, third person, plunU number, masculine 
gender, nominative case. , — 



92 Syntax Generally Considered. 

Love is a regular transitive verb, active voice, third person, 
plural number, present tense, indicative mood. 

Swimming is a common (or participial) noun, third person, sin- 
gular number, objective case. 

Now, take each one of these definitions, and ask why? and if 
you can answer properly, then the exercise has become of real and 
substantial benefit to you. Why a common noun ? Because it is a 
general name, and not a pwrticular one. Why third iperson? Be- 
cause it is spoken of. Why ^Z^mZ number? Because it means 
more than one. Why masculine gender? Because it is the name 
of males. Why nominative case? Because it is the subject of the 
sentence; and so on. If I had said, " Boys love to swim," the ob- 
ject, to swim, would be called a verbal noun. 



LETTER XIII. 

SYNTAX GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 

My DEAR James: 

134. In Letter II, paragraph 9, I shortly explained to 
you the meaning of the word Syntax, as that word is used 
in the teaching of grammar. Read that paragraph again. 

135. We are, then, now entering upon this branch of 
your study; and it is my object to teach you how to give 
all the words you make use of their proper situation when 
you come to put them into sentences. Because, though 
every word that you make use of may be correctly spelled ; 
that is to say, may have all the letters in it that it ought 
to have, and no more than it ought to have ; and though 
all the words may, at the same time, be the fit words to 
use in order to express what you wish to express ; yet, 
for want of a due observance of the principles and rules 
of Syntax, your sentences may be incorrect, and, in some 
cases, they may not express what you wish them to 
express. 

136. I shall, however, carry my instructions a little 



Syntax. 93 

fui'ther than the construction of independent sentences. 
I shall make some remai-ks upon the manner of putting 
sentences together; and on the things necessary to be 
understood, in order to enable a person to wi'ite a series 
of sentences. These remai-ks will show you the use of 
figui-ative language, and will, I hope, teach you how to 
avoid the very common error of making youi' writing con- 
fused and unintelli»ible. 



LETTEK XIV. 

SYNTAX. 

The Points and Marks made use of in Writing. 
My dear James: 

137. There are, as I informed you in paragragh 9, Let- 
ter II, Points made use of in the making, or writing, 
of sentences ; and, therefore, Ave must first notice these ; 
because, as you will soon see, the sense, or meaning, of 
the words is very much dependent upon the points which 
are used along with the words. For instance: " You will 
be rich if you be industrious, in a few years' Then 
again: ^'^You vnll be rich, if you he industrious in a few 
years^ Here, though in both sentences the words and 
also the order of the words ai-e precisely the same, the 
meaning of one of the sentences is very different from 
that of the other. The first sentence means that you Avill, 
in a few years'' time, be rich, if you be industrious now. 
The second sentence means that you will be rich, some 
time or other, if you be industrious in a feio years from 
this tim,e. And all this gi*eat difference in meaning is, as 
you must see, produced solely by the difference in the 
situation of the comma. Put another comma after the 
last word industrious, and the meaning becomes dubious. 



94 Syntax. 

A memorable proof of the great importance of attending 
to Points was given to the EngHsh nation in the year 
1817. A committee of the House of Lords made a report 
to the House, respecting certain poHtical clubs. A secre- 
tary of one of those clubs presented a petition to the 
House, in which he declared positively, and offered to 
prove at the bar, that a part of the report was totally 
false. At first their Lordships blustered; their high 
blood seemed to boil; but, at last, the Chairman of the 
Committee apologized for the report by saying that thera 
ought to have been a full-point where there was only a 
comma! and that it was this which made that false which 
would otherwise have been, and which was intended to be, 
true! 

138. These Points being, then, things of so much con- 
sequence in the forming of sentences, it is necessary that 
I explain to you the use of them, before I proceed any 
farther. There are four of them: the Full-point, or 
Period; the Colon; the Semi-colon ; the Comma. 

139. The Full-point is a single dot, thus [.], and it is 
used at the end of every complete sentence. That is to 
say, at the end of every collection of words which make a 
full and complete meaning, and is not necessarily con- 
nected with other collections of words. But a sentence 
may consist of several members or divisions, and then it 
is called a compound sentence. When it has no divisions, 
it is called a simple sentence. Thus : " The people suffer 
great misery." This is a simple sentence; but, "The 
people suffer great misery, and daily perish for want," is 
a compound sentence; that is to say, it is compounded, 
or made up, of two simple sentences. 

140. The Colon, which is written thus [:], is next to 
the full-point in requiring a complete sense in the words. 
It is, indeed, often used when the sense is complete, but 
when there is something still behind, which tends to make 
the sense fuller or clearer. 



f 



Syntax. 95 

141. The Semi-colo7i is wi-itten thus [;], and it is used 
to set off, or divide, simple sentences, in cases when the 
comma is not quite enough to keep the meaning of the 
simple sentences sufficiently distinct. 

142. The Comma is Avritten thus [,], and is used to 
mai'k the shortest pauses in reading, and the smallest 
divisions in writing. It has, by some grammaiians, been 
given as a rule to use a comma to set off every pai't of a 
compound sentence, which part has in it a verb not in the 
infinitive mode ; and, certainly, this is, in general, proper. 
But it is not always jji'oper; and, besides, commas are 
used, in numerous cases, to set off' parts which have no 
verbs in them ; and even to set off single words which are 
not verbs ; and of this the very sentence which I am now 
Avriting gives you ample proof. The comma marks the 
shortest pause that we make m speaking ; and it is evi- 
dent that, in many cases, its use must depend upon taste. 
It is sometimes used to give e/n^^hasis, or loeight, to the 
word after which it is put. Observe, now, the following 
two sentences: "I was very well and cheerful last week: 
but^ am rather feeble and low-spuited now." "I am very 
willing to ;yield to your kind requests; but, 1 will set 
yom* hai'sh commands at defiance." Commas are made 
use of when phrases, that is to say, portions of words, 
ai'e thi'owed into a sentence, and which ai'e not absolutely 
necessai'y to assist in its grammatical construction. For 
instance: "There wereii/i </ie year 1817* petitions from a p ^y 
milhon and a half of men, who, as they distinctly alleged, 

were suffering the greatest possible hardships." The two 
phrases, in italics, may be left out in the reading, and 
still the sentence will have its full grammatical con- 
struction. 

Here Cobbett shows lie miulc no distinction between a plirase 
and a clause. It is true that in a popular sense any number of 
words maybe called a pi 1 ruse; as, " How doi'ou do? Good-bye." 
But in gnuuniar this word has a particular sense, and these last- 



96 Syntax. 

mentioned expressions do not agree with it. ' ' In the year 1817 " is 
a phrase, and " as they distinctly alleged" is a clause, because the 
former has neither subject nor predicate and the latter has both. 
I must say, too, that at the present day no corrector for the press 
(proof-reader) would allow those commas to stand after those buts. 
Further, throwed instead of thrown is not yet in common use ; but 
I am inclined to think it will soon be, just like sawed instead of 
sawn, or crowed instead of crew. 

143. Let us now take a compound sentence or two con- 
taining all the four points. "In a land of liberty it is ex- 
tremely dangerous to make a distinct order of tlie profes- 
sion of arms. In absolute monarchies this is necessary 
for the safety of the prince, and arises from the main 
principle of their constitution, which is that of governing 
by fear; but in free states the profession of a soldier, 
taken singly and merely as a profession, is justly an ob- 
ject of jealousy. In these states no man should take up 
arms, but with a view to defend his country and its laws : 
he puts off the citizen when he enters the camp : but it is 
because he is a citizen, and would continue so, that he 
makes himself for a while a soldier. The laws therefore 
and constitution of these kingdoms know no such state as 
that of a perpetual standing soldier, bred up to no other 
profession than that of war ; and it was not till the reign 
of Henry VII. that the kings of England had so much as 
a guard about their persons." This passage is taken from 
Blackstone's Commentaries, Book I. Chap. 13. Here are 
four complete sentences. The first is a simple sentence. 
The other three are compound sentences. Each of these 
latter has its members, all very judiciously set off by 
points. The word so, in the third sentence, ought to be 
such, or the words a citizen ought to be repeated. . But, 
with this trifling exception, these are very beautiful sen- 
tences. Nothing affected or confused in them : all is sim- 
ple, clear, and harmonious. 

144. You will now see that it is quite impossible to 
give any precise rules for the use of these several points. 



Syntax. 97 

Much must be left to taste : something must depend upon 
the weight which we may wish to give to pai'ticular words, 
or phi*ases; and something on the seriousness, or the 
levity, of the subject on which we are waiting. 

i45. Besides these points, however, there are certain 
gi-ammatical signs, or marks, which are made use of in 
the wiiting of sentences : the mark of parenthesis, the 
mark of interrogation, the mai'k of exclamation, the 
apostrophe, otherwise called the mai'k of elision, and the 
hyphen. 

146. The mark of JParenthesis consists of two cui'ved 
strokes, di'awed across the line of Avriting, or of print. Its 
use is to enclose a phiase throwed in hastily to assist in 
elucidating om- subject, or to add force to om* assertions 
or ai-guments. But, observe, the parenthesis ought to be 
very spaiingly used. It is necessarily an interrupter ; it 
breaks m upon the regular course of the mind: it tends 
to divert the attention from the main object of the sen- 
tence. I will give you, from Mr. Tull, Chap. XIII, an 
instance of the omission of the parenthesis, and also of 
the proper employment of it. " Palladius thought also, 
with others of the ancients, that Heaven was to be fright- 
ened with red cloth, with the feathers or the heart of an 
owl, and a multitude of such ridiculous scarecrows, from 
spoiling the fi-uits of the fields and gardens. The ancients 
having no rational principles, or theory of agricultui'e, 
placed theu- chief confidence in magical charms and en- 
chantments, which he, who has the patience or curiosity 
to read, may find, under the title aforementioned, in Cato, 
in Varro {a)id even Columella is as fulsome as any of 
them), aU written in very fine language ; which is most of 
the ei-udition that can be acquii'ed as to field husbandly, 
from the Greek and Latin waiters, whether in verse or 
prose." For \vant of the mark of parenthesis in the first 
of these sentences, we almost think, at the close of it, 
that the author is speaking of the crows, and not of 
5 



98 Bynta'X,. 

Heaven^ being frightened from spoiling the fruits of the 
fields and the gardens. But with regard to the use of 
the parenthesis, I shall speak, perhaps, more fully by- 
and-by : for the employment of it is a matter of some im- 
portance. 

It is, perhaps, worth, mentioning that this word parenthesis, like 
all the words ending in is, changes the i into e in the plural : paren- 
theses, crises, theses. So that we must speak of a word or sen- 
tence being enclosed in parentheses, not parenthesis. 

147. The mark of Interrogation, which is written thus 
[?], is used when a question is asked; as, " Who has my 
penf'' ^'■WTiat man is thatf'' In these and numerous 
other cases, the mark is not necessary to our clearly com- 
prehending the meaning of the writer. But this is not 
always the case. "What does he say? Put the horse 
into the stable." Again: " What does he say ? Put the 
horse into the stable?" In speaking, this great difference 
in the meaning, in this instance, would be fully expressed 
by the voice and manner of the speaker ; but, in writing, 
the mark of interrogation is, you see, absolutely necessary 
in order to accomplish the purpose. 

148. The mark of Exclamation, or Admiration, is writ- 
ten thus [!], and, as its name denotes, is used to distin- 
guish words or sentences that are exclamatory, from such 
as ai'e not : " What do you say ! What do you say .^" The 
difference in the sense is very obvious here. Again: "i?e 
is going away to-night! He is going away to-night ^ 
The last simply states the fact; but the first, besides 
stating the fact, expresses surprise at it. 

149. The Apostrophe, or mark of Elision, is a comma 
placed above the line, thus [']. Elision means a striking 
out; and this mark is used for that purpose; as, don't 
for do not; tho' for though/ lov^l for loved. I have 
mentioned this mark, because it is used properly enough 
in poetry ; but, I beg you never to use it in prose in one 
single instance during your whole life. It ought to be 



Points and Marks. 99 

called the mark uot of elision, but of laziness and vul- 
(jarlty. It is necessary as the mai'k of the possessive case 
of nouiis, as you have seen in Letter V, paragraph 47. 
That is its use, and any other employment of it is an abuse. 

150. The IlypJien or Conjolner is d little line used to 
connect words, or parts of words ; as in sea-fish, water-rat. 
For here ai-e two distinct words, though they, in these in- 
stances, make but one. Sometimes the hyphen is used to 
connect many words together: "The never-to-be-forgotten 
cimelty of the borough-tyi'ants." When, in writing, or in 
printhig, the line ends with pai"t of a word, a hyphen is 
placed after that part, in order to show that that part \*i 
to be joined, in the reading, with that which begins the 
next line. 

151. These are all the grammatical marks ; but there 
are others used in Avi-iting for the purpose of saving time 
and words. The mai-k of quotation or of citing. This 
mark consists of tico commas j)laced thus : " There were 
many men." It is used to enclose words taken from other 
writings or from other jDcrsons' discourse ; and, indeed, it 
is frequently used to enclose certain sentences, or words, 
of the writer, when he wishes to mark them as wholly 
distinct fxom the general coui'se of any statement that he 
is making, or of any instruction that he is giving. I have, 
for instance, in the "writing of these Letters to you, set 
off many of my examples by marks of quotation. In 
short, its use is to notify to the reader that such and such 
words, or such and such sentences, are not to be looked 
upon as forming pai't of the regular coin-se of those 
thoughts which ai"e at the present time coming from the 
mind of the writer. 

152. This mark fl[] is found in the Bible. It stands 
for paragraph. Tliis [§] is sometimes used instead of 
the word section. As to stars [*J and the other mai'ks 
which are used for the purpose of leading the eye of the 
reader to notes, in the same page, or at the end of the 



100 Syntax. 

book, tliey are perfectly arbitrary. You may use for 
this purpose any marks that you please. But let me 
observe to you here, that notes ought seldom to be re- 
sorted to. Like parentheses, they are interrupters, and 
much more troublesome interrupters, because they gener- 
ally tell a much longer story. The employing of them 
arises, in almost all cases, from confusion in the mind of 
the writer. He finds the matter too much for him. He 
has not the talent to work it all up into one lucid whole ; 
and, therefore, he puts part of it into notes. Notes are 
seldom read. If the text, that is to say, the main part 
of a writing, be of a nature to engage our earnest atten- 
tion, we have not time to stop to read the notes : and if 
oiu- attention be not earnestly engaged by the text, we 
soon lay down the volume, and of course read neither 
notes nor text. 

153. As a mark of abbreviation, the full point is used ; 
as, " Mr. Mrs." But I know of hardly any other words 
that ought to be abbreviated ; and if these were not it 
would be all the better. People may indulge themselves 
in this practice, until at last they come to vn'ite the 
greater part of their words in single letters. The fre- 
quent use of abbreviation is always a mark of slovenliness 
and of vulgarity. I have known lords abbreviate almost 
the half of their words : it was, very likely, because they 
did not know how to spell them to the end. Instead of 
the word and, you often see people put &. For what 
reason I should like^ to know. But to this & is sometimes 
added a c/ thus, &c. Ajid is in Latin et, and c is the 
fii'st letter of the Latin word cmtera, which means the 
like, or so 07%. Therefore this &c. means and the like, or 
and so on. This abbreviation of a foreign word is a most 
convenient thing for such wiiters as have too much indo- 
lence or too little sense to say fully and clearly what they 
ought to say. If you mean to say ayid the like, or and so 
on, why not say it ? This abbreviation is very frequently 



Points and Marks. 101 

made use of without the writer having any idea of its 
import. A writer on grammar says, "^Vhen these 
words ai'e joined to if, since, cdc, they are adverbs." 
But where is the like of if, or of since f The best way 
to guard yourself against the committing of similar eiTors 
is never to use this abbreviation. 

154. The use of capitals and italics I will notice in 
this place. In the books printed before the middle of 
the last century, a capital letter was used as the fii'st 
letter of every noun. Capitals are now used more spar- 
ingly. We use them at the beginning of every para- 
gi'aph, let the word be what it may ; at the beginning of 
every sentence which follows a full-point ; at the begin- 
ning of oSS. proper names ; at the beginning of all adjec- 
tives growing out of the names of countries, or nations ; 
as, the English language ; the French fashion ; the 
American government. We use capitals, besides, at the 
beginning of any word, when we think the doing of it 
likely to assist in elucidating oiu* meaning, but in general 
we use them as above stated. The use of italic charac- 
ters in print is to point out, as worthy of particular atten- 
tion, the words distinguished by those characters. In 
writing with a pen, a stroke is drawn under such words 
as we wish to be considered to be in italics. If Ave wish 
words to be put in small capitals, we di'aw two strokes 
under them ; if in FULL CAPITALS, we di-aw three 
strokes imder them. 

155. The last thing I shall mention, under this head, 
is the caret [a], which is used to point upwards to a part 
which has been omitted, and which is inserted between 
the hue, where the caret is placed, and the line above it. 
Things should be called by then' right names, and this 
should be called the blunder-mark. I would have you, 
my dear James, scorn the use of this thing. Think 
before you write ; let it be your custom to write correctly 
and ill a pluin luuid. Be as careful that neatness, gram- 



102 Syntax. 

mar, and sense prevail, when you write to a blacksmith, 
about shoeing a horse, as when you write on the most 
importaiit subjects, and when you expect what you write 
to be read by persons whose good opinion you are most 
anxious to obtain or secure. Habit is powerful in all cases ; 
but its power in this case is truly wonderful. When you 
write, bear constantly in mind that some one is to read 
and to understand what you write. This will make yoiu: 
handwriting, and also your meaning, plain. Never think 
of mending what you write. Let it go. No patching ; 
no after pointing. As your pen moves, bear constantly 
in mind that it is making strokes which are to remain 
for ever. Far, I hope, from my dear James will be the 
ridiculous, the contemptible affectation, of writing in a 
slovenly or illegible hand ; or that of signing his name 
otherwise than in plain letters. 

156. In concluding this Letter, let me caution you 
against the use of what, by some, is called the dash. 
The dash is a stroke along the line ; thus, "I am rich — 
I was poor — I shall be poor again." This is wild work 
indeed ! Who is to know what is intended by the use of 
these dashes ? Those who have thought proper, like MJr. 
Lindley Murray, to place the dash amongst the gr-atn- 
matical points, ought to give us some rule relative to its 
different longitudinal dimensions in different cases. The 
inch, the three-quarter-inch, the half-inch the quarter- 
inch • these would be something determinate ; but, " the 
dash,'^ without measure, must be a most perilous thing 
for a young grammarian to handle. In short, " the dash'''' 
is a cover for ignorance as to the use of points, and it 
can answer no other purpose. — A dash is very often put 
in crowded print, in order to save the room that would 
be lost by the breaks of distinct paragraphs. This is 
another matter. Here the dash comes after a full-point. 
It is the using of it in the body of a sentence against 
which I caution you. 



Points and Marks. 103 

As to the " no patching; no after-pointing," this is all very well 
for those who are endowed with uncommon talent for composi- 
tion ; but everybody cannot be a Shakespeare or a Cobbett. It is 
well known that Pope corrected and recorrected, polished and re- 
polished his lines "many a time and oft," and I have heard that 
Schiller and other good writers have done the same thing ; 
Macaulay, for instance. You will have written many a page 
before you acquire such sureness of hand and perfect power of 
expression as never to need to change a word or add a point on 
looking over what you have written. In this very paragraph I had 
lirst written "everybody cannot be Shakespeares or Cobbetts;" 
but, on looking it over, I saw that everybody, the subject, is singular, 
and that therefore the attribute ought to agree with it. The eye 
often detects errors committed by the ear or the tongue ; and the 
ear often detects errors committed by the hand or the pen. 

Cobbett's advice concerning the dash is, I think, by no means to 
be followed. His contempt for this mark is one of his crotchets, 
of wliich he had quite a large stock. The dash is now universally 
used by good writers, and is, in its proper place, conducive to 
clearness; it is, in fact, quite as good a point as any other. 
There are some persons — especially half-educated young board- 
ing-school misses — who clap in a dash for almost every pause; 
but this is no reason why it should not be used in its proper 
l)luce, which is either immediately before some expression tend- 
ing to complete the thought, or to enclose some explanatory 
clause thrown in like a parenthesis. The first case may be illus- 
trated by the dash on page 1, immediately before the words "I 
mean dictation," and the second case by the above expression 
concerning half-educated young misses. To be sure, there are 
cases in which another point may, perhaps, be used with equal 
propriety; but this mark is now generally recognized as a proper 
mark in punctuation, and you may use it whenever you think 
proper. 

The very best way of learning punctuation is, as I have else* 
Avhere said, by writing to dictation. By the frequent writing 
d(nvn of other people's points, one gets a good general knowledge 
of the whole siibjcct, and tlien one gradually forms a style of one's 
own. For it is well known that in the English language punctua- 
tion is to a great extent, a matter of taste; and Cobbett himself, 
as you must have seen by this time, is quite peculiar in Ids taste 
in tills matter. He uses far more points than most other writers, 
especially commas, and he capitalizes far more words than most 



104 Syntax. 

others writers. This he does for the sake of emphasis, or of 
prominence; as, for instance, in the names of the parts of speech 
throughout this whole grammar. He overdoes this matter I think, 
and he uses too many italics ; for in most sentences the proper 
emphasis must be left to the reader. 

I notice that the tendency in our modern newspapers is to drop 
as many points as possible. Whether this is done to save space, 
time, and labor, or whether it is done for the sake of improve- 
ment, I do not know ; but I do know that the punctuating of our 
New York editor of to-day presents a remarkable contrast to that 
of Cobbett ; for you may see any day in the leading columns of 
the Herald, the Tribune, or the Times, sentences of seven or 
eight lines, with all manner of phrases and clauses, without a 
single point of any description, except a period at the end. I 
suppose they will leave that out too, by-and-by. I once heard of 
a painter who put a period between every word of the sign which 
he was painting, but put no point at the end. On being reproached 
with this, he exclaimed : "Why, every fool knows enough to stop 
when he comes to the end!^' I suppose our New York editor 
would excuse his omission of points on the same principle, that 
every one should know enough to stop where he ought to stop. 
Cobbett committed, I think, the opposite error : he seems to have 
attempted to put a point after every word, or nearly every word, 
where a pause occurs ; which is something that ought not to be 
done, and indeed never is nor can be done. Those pauses occurring 
where there arc no points are rhetorical pauses, which the feeling 
or instinct of every good reader leads him to make. We often 
pause, for instance, for the sake of emphasis; as after points, 
feeling and instinct in the preceding sentence. 

The matter of simple, compound, and complex sentences, which 
Cobbett merely touches, is very important to those who intend to 
pass an examination in grammar ; for a knowledge of it is neces- 
sary in Analysis, and all those who pretend to have a " teaching" 
knowledge of grammar must know how to analyze. I will there- 
fore try to give a little fuller explanation of it. "I study." This 
is a simple sentence, because it consists of but one simple proposi- 
tion or assertion, having but one subject and onejjredicate. "I 
study and Charles plays." Here there are two distinct propositions, 
or two distinct clauses; hence the sentence is compound. (Mark 
that word distinct.) "When I study, Charles plays." Here there 
are also two clauses, but not distinct; they are dependent, or 
rather one depends on the other; hence the sentence is called 



Points and Marks. 105 

complex. The clause that makes complete sense (Charles plays), 
is the chiif (.hiuse, ami the other is the dependent one. You per- 
ceive tliiit the dei)endent clause simply shows when Charles plays; 
therefore the main thing is the playing of Charles, and the other 
simply shows the time of his playing. When there is but one 
proposition or statement, the sentence is simple; when there are 
two or more distinct or separate propositions, the sentence is com- 
pound; but when there are two or more propositions, one depend- 
ing on the other, the sentence is complex. " Every morning at 
five o'clock we walk into the forest beyond the river." Here is 
but one simple statement, we walk, and the rest consists of modi- 
fying phrases. We walk. When? Every morning. At what 
part of the morning? At five o'clock. Where? Into the forest. 
Where is the forest ? Beyond the river. 

Here is a good, though somewhat mechanical rule, for deter- 
mining the nature of a sentence : Any sentence that you may cut 
into two sentences by placing a period after any word in it, is 
compound; any sentence, consisting of two or more clauses, 
which you can not thus cut into two sentences, is complex. A 
sentence consisting of but one proposition, having but one subject 
or predicate, is simple. Of Cobbett's three sentences, at the begin- 
ning of this paragraph 156, the first is complex, the second com- 
pound, the third simple. 

And now I see that I have to explain something else that is 
necessary to a knowledge of Analysis, — I mean the classification 
of sentences into declarative, interrogative, exclamatory and im- 
perative. "I study" is called a simple declarative sentence; 
declarative, because it declares or atfirms something. Nine out of 
ten of all the sentences we utter are declarative. " Do I study?" 
is a simple interrogative sentence ; interrogative, because it asks a 
question. An interrogation may sometimes be merely a forcible 
way of declaring something ; as. Should any man be deprived of 
liis liberty because he is black? But this is a figure, as you will 
see by-and-by. "How 1 love to study!" is a simple exclamatory 
sentence; exclamatory, because it contains an exclamation. 
"Study, and get on in the world!" is a compound imperative sen- 
tence; imperative, because it contains a command or an entreaty. 
Thus, we find that a sentence that declares or affirms anything is 
declarative; that one that asks a question is interrogative; that 
one that contains an exclamation is exclamatory; and that one 
that contains a command or an entreaty is imperative. Let me 
give you three more examples, covering the whole ground: 
r* 



106 Syntax^ 

John Brown was hanged. (Simple declarative sentence.) 
Was John Brown hanged ? (Simple interrogative sentence.) 
What a spectacle for men and angels ! John Brown hanged and 

Jefferson Davis pardoned ! (Conipo\ind exclamatory sentence. ) 
Hang John Brown, and pardon Jefferson Davis. (Compound 

imperative sentence.) 



LETTEE XV. 

SYNTAX, AS RELATING TO AETICLES. 

My DEAR James : 

157. Before you proceed to my instructions relative to 
the employing of Articles, you will do well to read again 
all the paragraphs in Letter IV. Our Articles are so 
few in number, and they are subject to so little variation 
in their orthography, that very few ei"rors can arise in the 
use of them. But, still, errors may arise ; and it will 
be necessary to guard you against them. 

158. You will not fall into very gross errors in the use 
of the Ai'ticles. You will not say, as in the erroneous 
passage cited by Doctor Lowth, " And I persecuted 
this way unto the death," meaning death generally / but 
you may commit errors less glaring. " The Chancellor 
informed the Queen of it, and she immediately sent for 
the Secretary and Treasurer." Now, it is not certain 
here, whether the Secretary and Treasurer be not one 
and the same person ; which uncertaiaty would have been 
avoided by a repetition of the Article : " the Secretary 
and t?ie Treasurer :" and you will bear in mind that, in 
every sentence, the very first thing to be attended to is 
clearness as to meaning. 

159. Nouns which express the whole of a species do 
not, in general, take the definite Article ; as, " Grass is 
good for horses, and loheat for men." Yet, in speaking of 



As Relating to Articles. 107 

the appeai'ance of the face of the country, we say, " I'/ie 
gi-ass looks well ; the wheat is blighted." The reason of 
this is that we are, in this last case, limiting oui' meaning 
to the grass and the wheat which are on the ground at this 
time. "Howdo Ao/>s sell? //ops are dear ; but iAe hops 
look promising." In this respect there is a passage in 
Ml". Tull which is faulty. " Neither could weeds be of any 
prejudice to corn.'''' It should be ^Hhe corn ;" for he does 
not mean corn universally, but the standing corn, and the 
com amongst which weeds grow; and, therefore, the 
definite Article is required. 

160. "Ten shillings the bushel," and like phrases, ai'e 
perfectly correct. They mean, "ten shillings by the 
bushel, or for the bushel." Instead of this mode of ex- 
pression we sometimes use, "ten shillings a bushel:" 
that is to say, ten shilhngs/br a bushel, or a bushel at a 
time. Either of these modes of expression is far prefer- 
able to per bushel ; for the i)er is not English, and is, to 
the greater part of the people, a mystical sort of word. 

101. The indefinite Article a, or an., is used with the 
words day, month, year, and others; as, once a day; 
twice a month ; a thousand pounds a year. It means in 
a day, in a month, in or for a year ; and though per 
annum means the same as this last, the English j)hrase is, 
in all respects, the best. The same may be said of j^^er 
cent., that '\'& per centurn, or, in plain English, ybr the hun- 
dred, or a hundred: by ten per centum we mean ten for 
the hmidred, or ten for a hundred ; and why can we 
not, then, say, in plain English, what we mean? 

162. "When there are several nouns following the indef- 
inite Ai*ticle, care ought to be taken that it accord with 
them. ".'1 dog, cat, owl, and sparrow." Owl requii'es an ; 
and, therefore, the Ai'ticle must be repeated in this 
phrase ; as, a dog, a cat, an owl, and a sparrow. 

163. Nouns, signifying fixed and settled collections of 
individuals, as thousand, hundred, dozen, score, take the 



108 Syntax, 

indefinite Article, though they are of plural meaning. It 
is a certain mass, or number, or multitude, called a score ; 
and so on ; and the Article agrees with these understood 
words, which are in the singular number. 

In a recent announcement of a new novel by Robert Buchanan, 
the publishers quote this one line concerning it from the London 
Spectator: "The work of a genius and a poet," — which is in it- 
self a sufficient comment on the discriminating taste of the pub- 
lisher and the culture of the critic. Bat I suppose a man may be 
a good publisher or a good critic, and yet not know how to write 
or to select good English. 

You must say either "the first and the second class," or "the 
first and second classes;" not "the first and second class," which 
would mean one class that is both first and second. Take one or two 
similar examples : "I have read the first and the second chapter, 
or the first and second chapters ; strike out the first and the second 
line, or the first and second lines." You may say, "the north and 
south line," because this is one line that runs north and south ; but 
you cannot say "the north and west line." It will not do to say 
"the two first classes," because there cannot be any such thing as 
two first classes; but "the first two classes," which means simply 
the two classes that come first in order. So with other similar ex- 
pressions; as, the first two pages, the first two days, &c. You 
must say, "He is a better speaker than writer," not "than a 
writer." "He is a statesman and historian," not "a statesman 
and an historian." " Wanted — A clerk and copyist." How often 
such an expression is used to mean two persons,.whereas it really 
means one ! "There lives in this town a philosopher and a poet." 
The predicate shows that one person is meant, while the subject 
indicates two. Mr. White quotes the following announcement 
from a street-ear : ' ' Passengers are requested not to hold conversa- 
tion with either conductor or driver;" and then says : "Now this 
implies that there are two conductors and two drivers, and that 
the passengers are asked not to talk, or, in elegant phrase, ' hold 
conversation,' with either of them. The simple introduction of the 
rectifies the phrase : ' not to hold conversation with either the con- 
ductor or the driver.' " 

I saw the other day in Pearl Street, New York, a place with 
this sign: "Hatters, Tailors, and Factory Stqves." This really 
means that the owner of the place has hatters and tailors to sell, as 
well as factory stoves. It might pass with the sign of the pos- 



As Ilelatm<j to JVbuns. 109 

sessive: "Hatters', Tiiilors', and Factory Stoves;" but tliis, too, 
is bad, because liatters and tailors cannot be placed in the same 
category with a factory. It should be "Stoves for Hatters, Tailors, 
and Manufacturers,*' or "Hatters', Tailors', and Manufacturers' 
Stoves." But this would probably be too long for the stove-maker; 
so he preferred writing nonsense. This trying to make everything 
short is the root of these errors. Here is a man in Beekman Street 
who calls his Eating-House a " Commercial Lunch! " What kind 
of a compound may a co7nmen'ial lunch be? Is it not a lunch 
made of various articles of commerce : beeswax, potatoes, turpen- 
tine, pig-iron, and leather? Of course he means a Lunch for 
Commercial People, or Lunch for Business Men, or still better, 
Business Men's Lunch ; but this, no doubt, was too long for him. 



LETTER XVI. 

syntax, as relating to nouns. 

My deab James 

164. Read again Letter V, the subject of which is the 
Etymology of Nouns. Nouns are governed, as it is called, 
by verbs and prepositions; that is to say, these latter 
sorts of words cause iiouns to be in such or such a case; 
and there must be a concord, or an agreement, bet^veen 
the Nouns and the other words, which, along with the 
Nouns, compose a sentence. 

1G5. But these matters will be best explained when I 
come to the Sy)itax of Verbs, for, until we take the verb 
into account, we cannot go far in giving rules for the 
forming of sentences. Under the present head, therefore, 
I shall content myself with doing little more than to give 
some farther account of the manner of using the posses- 
sive case of Nouns ; that being the only case to denote 
which oiu' Nouns v((.nj their endings. 

166. The possessive case was pretty fully spoken of by 
me in the Letter just refeiTcd to; but there are certain 



110 Syntax, 

other observations to make with regard to the using of it 
in sentences. When the Noun which is in the possessive 
case is expressed by a circumlocution, that is to say by 
many words in lieu of one, the sign of the possessive case 
is joined to the last word; as, '•'■John, the old farmer's, 
wife." '■'■Oliver, the spy's, evidence." It is however much 
better to say, "The wife of John, the old farmer." The 
"evidence of Oliver, the spy." 

167. When two or more Nouns in the possessive case 
follow each other, and are joined by a conjunctive con- 
junction, the sign of the possessive case is, when the 
thing possessed is the same, put to the last noun only ; 
as, "Peter, Joseph, and Richard's estate." In this ex- 
ample, the thing possessed being one and the same thing, 
the sign applies equally to each of the three possessive 
Nouns. But "Peter's, Joseph's, and Richard's estate," 
implies that each has an estate ; or, at least, it will admit 
of that meaning being given to it, while the former phrase 
will not. 

168. Sometimes the sign of the possessive case is left 
out, and a hyphen is used in its stead ; as, " Edwards, the 
government-spy P That is to say, " the government's 
spy ;" or, " the spy of the government." These two words, 
joiaed in this manner, are called a compound Noun; and 
to this compounding of Nouns our language is very 
prone. We ^2,-^ '•'• chamber-floor, horse-shoe, dog-collar f^ 
that is to say, '■'■ chamber'' s floor, horse's shoe, dog^s collar." 

169. This is an advantage peculiar to our language. It 
enables us to say much in few words, which always gives 
strength to language ; and, after clearness, strength is the 
most valuable quality that vn.'iting or speaking can possess. 
" The Yorkshu-emen flew to arms." If we could not com- 
pound our words, we would have to say, " The men of the 
shire of York flew to arms." When you come to learn 
French, you will soon see how much the English lan- 
guage is better than the French in this respect. 



As Relating to JVonns. Ill 

170. You must take care, when you use the possessive 
case, not to use after it words which create a confusion in 
meaning. Hume has this sentence : " They flew to ai'ms 
and attacked NortMimherlancT s house, tohom they put to 
death." We know what is meant, because whom can 
relate to persons only ; but if it had been an attack on 
Northmuberland's men, the meaning would have been 
that the men v)ere put to death. However, the sentence, 
as it stands, is sufficiently incorrect. It should have been : 
" They flew to ai-ms, and attacked the house of Northum- 
berland, whom they put to death." 

171. A passage from Doctor Hugh Blair, the author of 
Lectures on Rhetoric, will give you another instance of 
error in the use of the possessive case. I take it from 
the 24;th Lecture: "In comparing Demosthenes and 
Cicero, most of the Fi'ench critics are disposed to give 
the preference to the latter. P. Rapin, the Jesuit, in the 
parallels which he has di'awn between some of the most 
eminent Greek and Roman writers, uniformly decides in 
favor of the Roman. For the preference which he gives 
to Cicero, he assigns and lays stress on one reason, of a 
pretty extraordinaiy nature, viz., that Demosthenes could 
not possibly have so clear an insight as Cicero into the 
manners and passions of men. Why % because he had not 
the advantage of jyerusing Aristotle's Treatise on Rheto- 
ric, wherein, says our critic, he has fully laid open that 
mystery ; and to support this weighty argument, he en- 
ters into a controversy with A. Gellius, iii order to prove 
that Aristotle's Rhetoric was not published till after De- 
mosthenes had spoken, at least, his most considerable 
orations." It is sui-prising that the Doctor should have 
jiut such a passage as this upon paper, and more sm-pris- 
ing that he should leave it in this state after having 
perused it with that cai-e which is usually employed in 
exauiining ^vritings that are to be put into print, and 
especially wiitings in which every word is expected to be 



112 iSyntaiA, 

used in a proper manner. In Bacon, in Tull, in Black- 
stone, in Hume, in Swift, in Bolingbroke : in all writers, 
however able, we find errors. Yet, though, many of their 
sentences will not stand the test of strict grammatical 
criticism, the sense generally is clear to our minds ; and 
we read on. Put, in this passage of Dr. Blair, all is 
confusion: the mind is puzzled: we at last hardly know 
whom or what the writer is talking about, and we fairly 
come to a stand. 

172. In speaking of the many faults in this passage, I 
shall be obliged to make here observations which would 
come under the head of pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and 
prepositions. The first two of the three sentences are in 
themselves rather obsciure, and are well enough calculated 
for ushering in the complete confusion that follows. The 
he, which comes immediately after the word because, may 
relate to Demosthenes ; but to what Noun does the second 
he relate? It would, when we first look at it, seem to 
relate to the same Noun as the first he relates to ; for the 
Doctor cannot call Aristotle's Treatise on Hhetoric a he. 
No : in speaking of this the Doctor says " toherein /" that 
is to say, ioi which. He means, I dare say, that the he 
should stand for Aristotle; but it does not stand for 
Aristotle. This Noun is not a nominative in the sentence ; 
and it cannot have the pronoun relating to it as such. 
This he may relate to Cicero, who may be supposed to 
have laid open a mystery in the perusing of the treatise ; 
and the words which follow the he would seem to give 
countenance to this supposition; for what mystery is 
meant by the words '^that mystery"?" Is it the mystery 
of rhetoric, or the mystery of the 7nanners and passions 
of men f This is not all, however ; for the Doctor, as if 
bewitched by the love of confusion, must tack on another 
long member to the sentence, and bring forward another 
he to stand for P. Rapin, whom and whose argument we 
have, amidst the general confusion, wholly forgotten. 



As Relating to N'ouyis. 113 

There is an error also in the use of the active participle 
perusing. " Demosthenes could not have so complete an 
insight as Cicero, because he had not the advantage of 
perushig. That is to say, the advantage of being en- 
gsiged in perusing. But this is not what is meant. The 
Doctor means that he had not had the advantage of 
perusing; or, rather, that he had not the advantage of 
having perused. In other words, that Demosthenes could 
not have, or possess, a certain kind of knowledge at the 
time when he made his orations, because at that time, he 
had not, or did not possess, the advantage of having 
2:>erused, or hQ^'mg finished to peruse, the treatise of Aris- 
totle. Towai'ds the close of the last sentence the adverb 
" at least " is put in a wrong place. The Doctor means, 
doubtless, that the adverb should apply to considerable, 
and not to spoken; but, from its being improperly placed, 
it applies to the latter, and not to the former. He means 
to say that Demosthenes had spoken the most consider- 
able, at least, of his orations ; but as the words now stand, 
they mean that he had done the speaking part to them, if 
he had done nothing more. There is an error in the use 
of the word " insight,''^ followed, as it is, by " into.'''' We 
may have a look, or sight, into a house, but not an insight. 
This would be to take an inside vieio of an inside. 

173. We have here a pretty good proof that a knowl- 
edge of the Greek and Latin is not sufficient to prevent 
men from writing bad EngHsh. Here is a ^jro/c»i<M<? 
scholar, a teacher of Rhetoric, discussing the comparative 
merits of Greek and Latin writers, and disputing with a 
French critic; here he is writing Enghsh in a manner 
more incon-ectly than you will, I hope, be Hable to write 
it at the end of your reading of this little book. Lest it 
should be supposed that I have taken great pains to hunt 
out this erroneous passage of Doctor Blau*, I will inform 
you that I h;ive htuxlly looked into his book. Your 
brothers, in reading it through, mai'ked a great number 



114 Syntax, 

of erroneous passages, from amongst wliicli I have selected 
the passage just cited. With what propriety, then, are 
the Greek and Latin languages called the '■^learned lan- 
guages?" 

We take the form 's from the Germans, and hence it is called 
the Saxon possessive ; we take the form of the from the French, 
and hence it is called the Norman possessive. You will notice 
that the Saxon possessive is used, generally, in speaking of living 
things, and the other in speaking of things without life: "the 
man's hat, the horse's tail, the cow's horns ; the top of the house, 
the lid of the kettle, the color of the apple;" but this is by no 
means always the case, for we can speak of the mountain's top and 
of the roar of the lion. Sometimes we are obliged to use the Nor- 
man possessive to avoid a misconstruction, as in the case of "the 
house of Northiunberland," above quoted. 

There is another peculiar use of the possessive case, which Cob- 
bett has not mentiojied. "He spoke of John's (his) going to col- 
lege. There is no doubt of the UlVs passing the House." We often 
see the objective used in such cases, instead of the possessive; 
but the latter is correct. Just as we say "a friend of mine, of 
thine, of his, of hers, of yours, of theirs," so we say "a soldier of 
the king's, a horse of my neighbor's, a book of George's." So 
Cobbett ought to have said above, "this erroneous passage of 
Doctor Blair's." 

You notice that the only case-change an English noun can un- 
dergo is the addition of 's in the possessive. In both English and 
French the nominative and objective cases of nouns are invariable. 
Not so in German. The following sentence will show you at a 
glance the difference between our language and the German in this 
respect : 

nom. obj. nom. obj. 

The boy loves the traveler. The traveler loves the hoy. 
Der Knabe liebt den Ueisenden. Der Beisende liebt den Knabe. 

Here is a curious passage on this subject from Mr. White's 
"Everyday English" — a passage which, to prevent a confusion of 
apostrophes, I give in one paragraph, with none but Mr. White's 
points, except the dash at the beginning and at the end : 

— The Board of Civil Service Examiners at Washington gave, as 
a test of the knowledge of the use of the apostrophe as a sign of 
the possessive case, the following sentence: "The Commissioner 
of Custom's decisions are correct," requiring the apostrophe to be 



As JRelating to Pronouns. 115 

placed after "Customs." A dispute having arisen upon the point, 
and it being contended that the proper form was ' ' The Commis- 
sioner's (of Customs) decisions are correct," an officer of the 
Treasury Department submitted the -question to me for an 
opinion. — 

And Mr. White dechires that tlie decision of the Civil Service 
Board is correct. Now I am positive that, in this case, both Mr. 
White and the Board of Examiners are wrong. It is when a word 
or title is in the possessive case plural that we put merely an 
apostrophe after the « / as, the Examiners' duties ; the Commission- 
ers' affairs; but tlie term "Commissioner of Customs" is %ot plural, 
any more than ' ' Secretary of the Treasury " is plural. We say 
"The Secretary of the Treasury's report;" and if the Saxon posses- 
sive is to be used, grammar demands that we say ' ' The Commis- 
sioner of Custom's decisions;" for the sign of the possessive is for 
the trJwle expression, and not simply for customs. An apostrophe 
alone may be placed after Customs, because it will sound better, but 
not because it is grammatical. 

But why use this form at all ? Has it not been from a desire to 
avoid just such awkward expressions that the Norman possessive 
has come into use? Does it not sound much better to say "The 
decisions of the Commissioner of Customs" than "The Commis- 
sioner of Customs's decisions ?"— By the bye, is it not somewhat 
remarkable, not to say absurd, that the Board of Examiners should 
give applicants for inferior offices questions such as they them- 
selves are in dispute about, and concerning which even critics in 
language are at variance? 



LETTER XVII. 

syntax, as relating to pronouns. 

My dear James : 

174. You will now read again Letter VI. It will bring 
you back to the subject of pronouns. You will bear in 
mind that personal Pronouns stand for, or in the place 
of, nouns ; and that the greatest cai-e ought always to be 
taken in using them, because, being small words, and in 



116 Syntax, 

frequent use, the proper weight of them is very often 
unattended to. 

175. You have seen in the passage from Doctor Blair, 
quoted in the foregoing Letter, what confusion arises 
from the want of taking care that the Pronoun relate 
clearly to its nominative case, and that it be not left to 
be understood to relate to anything else. Little words, 
of great and sweeping influence, ought to be used with 
the greatest care; because errors in the using of them 
make such great errors in point of meaning. Li order to 
impress, at the outset, these precepts on jovoc mind, I 
will give you an instance of this kind of error from 
Addison; and, what is well calculated to heighten the in- 
terest you ought to feel upon the occasion, is, that the sen- 
tence which contains the error is, by Doctor Blair, held 
forth to students of languages, in the University of Edin- 
biurgh, as a perfect model of correctness avid of elegance. 
The sentence is from Addison's Spectator, Number 411. 
"There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be 
idle and innocent, or have a relish of any pleasrues that 
are not criminal; every diversion they take is at the ex- 
pense of some one virtue or other, and their very first 
step out of business is into vice or folly." Dr. Blair says: 
"Nothing can be more elegant, or more finely turned, 
than this sentence. It is neat, clear, and musical. We 
could hardly alter one word, or displace one member, 
without spoiling it. Few sentences are to be found more 
finished, or more happy." See Blair's 20th Lectvu-e on 
E-hetoric. 

176. Now, then, my dear little James, let us see whether 
we plain English scholars have not a little more judgment 
than this professor in a learned University, who could 
not, you will observe, be a Doctor, until he had preached 
a sermon in the Latin language. "What does the pronoun 
they mean in this sentence of Mr. Addison? What noun 
does it relate to; or stand for? What noun is the nomi- 



As lielatinff to Pronouns. 117 

native of tlie sentence? The nominative of the sentence 
is the word few, meaning fern persons. Very well, then, 
the Pronoun thej/ relates to this nominative; and the 
meaning' of the sentence is this : " That but few persons 
know how to be idle and innocent; thai Jew persons have 
a relish of any pleasures that are not criminal ; that every 
diversion these few per so7is take is at the expense of some 
one wtue or other, and that the very first step of these 
few perso7is out of business is into vice or folly." So 
that the sentence says lyrecisely the contrary of what the 
author meant ; or, rather, the whole is perfect nonsense. 
All this ai'ises fi'om the misuse of the Pi'onoun they. If, 
instead of this word, the author had j)ut people in gen- 
eral, or most people, or most men, or any word or words 
of the same meaning, all would have been right. 

177. I will take another instance of the consequence of 
being careless in the use of j)ersonal Pronouns. It is 
from Judge Blackstone, Book II, Chapter 6. "For the 
custom of the manor has, in both cases, so fai* superseded 
the will of the lord, that, provided the services be per- 
formed, or stipulated for by fealty, he cannot, in the first 
instance, refuse to admit the heir of his tenant upon his 
death; noi', in the second, can he remove his present 
tenant so long as he Hves." Here are lord, heir, and 
tenant, all confounded. We may guess at the Judge's 
meaning ; but we cannot say that we know what it is ; we 
cannot say that we are certaifi whose life, or v)hose death, 
he is speaking of. 

178. Never -wTite a j^ersonal Pronoun, without duly 
consideiing what noun it will, upon a reading of the 
sentence, be found to relate to. There must be a noun, 
expressed or understood, to which the Pronoun clearly 
relates, or you will not write sense. "The land-holder 
has been repi-esented as a monster which must be hunted 
down, and the fund-holder as a still gi-eater evil, and 
both have been described as rapacious creatui-es, who 



118 Syntax. 

take from the people fifteen pence out of every quartern 
loaf. They have been told that Parliamentary Beform is 
no more than a half measure, changing only one set of 
thieves for another ; and that they must go to the land, as 
nothing short of that would avail them.'''' This is taken 
from the memorable report of a committee of the House 
of Lords, in 1817, on which report the cruel dungeon bill 
was passed. Now, to what nouns do these Pronouns 
relate? Who are the ^lominatives in the first sentence? 
The land-holder and the fund-holder., to be sure ; and, 
therefore, to them do the Pronouns relate. These lords 
mean, doubtless, that the people had been told that the 
people must go to the land ; that nothing else would avail 
the people y but, though they mean this, they do not say 
it ; and this part of their report is as false in grammar as 
other parts of the report were in fact. 

179. When there are two or more nouns connected by 
a copulative conjunction, and when a Personal Pronoun is 
made use of to relate to them, or stand for them, you must 
take care that the personal Pronoun agree with them in 
number. "He was fonder of nothing than of wit and 
raillery • but he is far from being hapjpy in it." This 
Doctor Blair, in his 19th Lecture, says of Lord Shaftes- 
bury. Either wit and raillery are one and the same thing, 
or they are different things; if the former, one of the 
words is used unnecessarily; if the latter, the Pronoun 
ought to have been them, and not it. 

" I learned from Macaulay never to be afraid 

of using the same word or name over and over again, if by that 
means anytliing could be added to clearness or force. Macaulay 
never goes on, like some writers, talking about 'the former' and 
•the latter,' 'he, she, it, they,' through clause after clause, while 
his reader has to look back to see which of several persons it is 
that is so darkly referred to. No doubt a pronoun, like any other 
word, may often be repeated with advantage, if it is perfectly 
clear who is meant by the pronoun. And with Macaulay' s pro- 
nouns, it is always perfectly clear who is meant by them." — E. A. 



As Jielatinr/ to J^ro/ioi/jifi. 110 

Freeman, ia the International Review. Quoted by A. S. Hill. 
I have frequently noticed that there is a misty uucertaiuty as to the 
meaning of sentences in which "the former" and "the latter" 
occur. IIow often one is obliged to stop for a moment, and con- 
sider wiiich i\i "the former" and wliich "the latter"! I do not 
say you must not use tliese words; Cobbett, j^ou see, uses them 
(juite clearly in this last paragraph; but it is, generally, better to 
repeat the words for which they stand. 

180. When, however, the nouns take the disjunctive 
conjunction or, the Pronoun must be in the singulai' ; as, 
" "\i\Tien he shoots a partridge, a pheasant, or a woodcock, 
he gives it away." 

181. Nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Par- 
llameiit, Habble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of 
Kimfs Bench, Den of Thieves, and the hke, may have 
Pronouns agreeing with them either in the singular or in 
the plui-al number ; for we may, for instance, say of the 
House x)f Commons, " They refused to hear evidence 
against Castlereagh when Mr. Maddox accused him of 
haying sold a seat;" or, '•'•It refused to hear evidence." 
But we nuist be uniform in our use of the Pronoun in 
this respect. We must not, in the same sentence, and 
applicable to the same noun, use the singular in one pait 
of the sentence and the pliu-al in another part. We must 
not, in speaking of the House of Commons, for instance, 
say, '•'•They one year voted unanimously that cheap corn 
Avas an evil, and the next year it voted unanimously that 
dear com was an evil." There are persons who pretend 
to make very nice distinctions as to the cases when these 
nouns of multitude ought to take the singular, and when 
tliey ought to take the plui-al, Pronoun ; but these dis- 
tinctions are too nice to be of any real use. The rule is 
tliis: that nouns of multitude inay take either the singu- 
lar, or the jjlui'al, Pronoun; but not both in the same 
sentence. 

Tills will never do; it is far too indefinite. The pronoun stand- 
ing for a uouu of multitude is used in the singular if the idea of 



120 Syntax, 

unity is to be conveyed, and in the plural if the idea oi plurality is 
to be conveyed. Let me illustrate with some of these very nouns 
vrhich Cobbett so sarcastically huddles together : ' ' The mob now 
began to scatter in every direction, and they set up a hideous yell 
as tliey moved off. The mob came on in one compact body, and 
it did not fail to press itself through the gates of the palace. He 
hated the rabble, because tliey hated him. The rabble of New 
York lias a language and a literature of its own. The House of 
Commons could not agree on any measure of Reform ; so they 
were dismissed by the king. The House of Commons was unani- 
mous in condemning the obstructing Irish members, and it sus- 
pended them for two weeks. "When the Court of King's Bench 
passed sentence on Mr. Cobbett, it refused to reconsider its 
decision. I have been informed that there was some difference 
of opinion in the Court of King's Bench concerning Mr. Cobbett's 
case, though tTiey refused to reconsider tJieir decision. Here is a 
den of thieves ; suppress it. We came upon a den of thieves, who 
were so numerous that we did not venture to attack thcyny Thus, 
you see, that the singularity or plurality of the pronoun standing 
for a noun of multitude depends entirely upon whether an idea of 
unity or of •plurality is to be conveyed. 

182. As to gender, it is hardly possible to make a mis- 
take. There are no terminations to denote gender, except 
in the third person singular, he, she, or it. We do, how- 
ever, often per sonify things. Speaking of a nation, we often 
say she / of the sun, we say he / of the moon, we say she. 
We may personify things at our pleasure ; but we must 
take care to be consistent, and not call a thing he, or she, 
in one part of a sentence, and it in another part. The 
occasions when you ought to personify things, and when 
you ought not, cannot be stated in any precise rule. 
Your own taste and judgment will be your best guides. 
I shall give you my opinion about figures of speech in a 
future Letter. 

In an article on Longfellow, in the North American Review for 
July, 1882, the writer speaks of meeting "Mrs. William Cullen 
Bryant and her daughter, and others of my countrymen ," but you 
can hardly make such a blunder as that. 

183. Nouns which denote sorts, or kiads, of living crea- 



As delating to Pronouns. 121 

tures, and which do not of themselves distinguish the 
male from the female, such as rabbit, hare, hog, cat, pheas- 
ant, fowl, take the neuter Pronoun, unless we happen to 
know the gender of the individual we are speaking about. 
'If I see you with a cock pheasant in your hand, I say, 
"Where did you shoot himf'' but if you tell me you 
have a pheasant, T say, " Where did you shoot it f (See 
paragraphs 42 and 43. ) 

184. The personal Pronouns in their possessive case 
must, of coui'se, agree in number and gender with 
their correspondent nouns or Pronouns: "John and 
Thomas have been so fooHsh as to sell their land and to 
purchase what is called stock; but their sister, who has 
too much sense to depend on a»bubble for her daily bread, 
has kept her land; theirs is gone forever; but hers is 
safe." So they must, also, in their oJyec^^ye case .• "John 
and Thomas will lose the interest of their money, which 
will soon cease to be paid to them. The rents of their 
sister will be regularly paid to Aery and Richard will also 
enjoy his income, which is to be paid to hhn by his sister." 
If there be nouns of both genders used before Pronouns, 
care must be taken that no confusion or obscuiity arise 
from the misuse of the Pronoun. Hume says: "They 
declared it treason to attempt, imagine, or speak evil of 
the king, queen, or his heirs." This has, at least, a mean- 
ing, which shuts out the heirs of the queen. In such a 
case the feminine as well as the masculine pronoun should 
be used: ^^ his or her heu"s." 

185. Take care, in using the personal Pronouns, not to 
employ the objective case where you ought to employ the 
nominative ; and take care also of the opposite error. 
"Him strikes I: Her loves he." These offend the ear at 
once. But when a number of words come in between 
the discordant parts, the ear does not detect the error. 
"It was some of those who came hither last night, and 
went away this morning, who did the mischief, and not 

6 



122 Syntax, 

my brother and me." It ought to be "my brother and /." 
For I am not, in this instance, the object but the actor, or 
supposed actor. "Who broke that glass? " "It was wie." 
It ought to be I; that is to say, "It was I who broke it." 
Fill up the sentence with all the words that are under- 
stood ; and if there be errors, you will soon discover them. 
After the words than and as, this error, of putting the 
objective for the nominative, is frequently committed; as, 
"John was very rich, but Peter was richer than him/ 
and, at the same time, as learned as Aim, or any of his 
family." It ought to be richer than hey as learned as he/ 
for the full meaning here is, "richer than he was / as 
learned as he was" But it does not always happen that 
the nominative case comes after than or as. "I love you 
more than him / I give you more than him / I love you 
as well as him / " that is to say, I love you more than / 
love him / I give you more than I give to him/ I love 
you as well as I love him. Take away hhn and put he, in 
all these cases, and the grammar is just as good, only the 
meaning is quite different. "I love you as well as him," 
means that I love you as well as I love him / but "I 
love you as well as he," means, that I love you as well as 
fie loves you. 

186. You see, then, of what importance this distinction 
of cases is. But you must not look for this word, or that 
word, coming before or coming after to be your guide. 
It is reason which is to be your sole guide. When the 
person or thing represented by the Pronoun is the object, 
then it must be in the objective case ; when it is the actor, 
or when it is merely the person or thing said to be this or 
that, then it must be in the nominative case. Bead again 
paragraphs 46, 47, and 48, of Letter V. 

187. The errors committed with regard to the con- 
founding of cases arise most frequently when the Pro- 
nouns are placed, in the sentences, at a great distance 
from the words which are connected with them, and which 



As Melating to Pronouns. 123 

determine the case. "-Se and his sister, and not their 
uncle and cousins, the estate was given to." Here is 
nothing that sounds harsh ; but, bring the Pronoun close 
to the preposition that demands the objective case; say 
the estate was given to he ; and) then you perceive the 
grossness of the error in a moment. "The work of 
national ruin was pretty effectually carried on by the 
ministers; but more effectually by the paper-money 
makers than theyy This does not hurt the ear; but it 
ought to be them ; "more effectually than by themy 

188. The Pronouns mine, thine, theirs, yours, hers, his, 
stand frequently by themselves; that is to say, not fol- 
lowed by any noun. But then the noun is understood. 
"That is hers." That is to say, her property / her hat, or 
whatever else. No difficulty can arise in the use of these 
words. 

Except one. Some people erroneously write these words with 
an apostrophe ; our's, etc. A gentleman once showed me a letter 
which he considered perfect. So it was ; all except the last two 
words, which were written thus: "Your's truely." 

189. But the use of the personal Pronoun it is a subject 
of considerable importance. Bead again paragraphs 60 
and 61, Letter VI. Think well upon what you find there ; 
and when you have done that, proceed with me. This 
Pronoun with the verb to be is in constant use in our 
language. To say, " Tour uncle came hither last night," 
is not the same thing as to say, "J< was your uncle who 
came hither last night," though the /"act related be the 
same. " It is J who write " is very diffei'ent from " I 
write," though in both cases, my writing is the fact very 
clearly expressed, and is one and the same fact. "Zi5 is 
those men who deserve well of their country," means a 
great deal more than ^^ Those men deserve well of their 
country." The principal verbs are the same ; the prepo- 
sitions are the same; but the real meaning is different. 
"7i5 is the dews and showers that, make the grass grow," 



124 Syntax, 

is very different from merely observing, '■'■Dews and 
showers make the grass grow." 

190. Doctor Lowth has given it as his opinion, that it 
is not correct to place plural nouns or pronouns after the 
it, thus used ; an opinion which arose from the want of a 
little more reflection. The it has nothing to do, gram- 
matically speaking, with the rest of the sentence. The it, 
together with the verb to be, express states of being, in 
some instances, and in others this phrase serves to mark, 
in a strong manner, the subject, in a mass, of what is about 
to be affirmed or denied. Of course, this phrase, which 
is in almost incessant use, may be followed by nouns and 
pronouns in the singular, or in the plural number. I 
forbear to multiply examples, or to enumerate the various 
ways in which this phrase is used, because one graia of 
reasoning is worth whole tons of memory. The principle 
being once in your mind, it will be ready to be applied 
to every class of cases, and every particular case of each 
class. 

An example, however, often sticks where the principle fails to 
do so, " It is I ; it is thou ; it is he ; it is she ; it is we ; it is you ; 
it is they; it is the devil; it is the devils." These are all correct; 
because it is the subject, is is the predicate, and what follows is 
the attribute, which may be singular or plural. — I cannot help 
remarking that the pause after "thus used" in the third line of 
the above paragraph is a capital example of the place where the 
DASH ought to be used. 

191. For want of reliance on principles, instead of ex- 
amples, how the latter have swelled in number, and 
grammar-books in bulk ! But it is much easier to quote 
examples than to lay down principles. For want of a 
little thought as to the matter immediately before us, 
some grammarians have found out "an absolute case,''' as 
they call it; and Mk. Lindley Murray gives an instance 
of it in these words : "Shame being lost, all virtue is lost." 
The full meaning of the sentence is this : It being, or the 



As Melating to Pronouns. 125 

state of things being such, that " shame is lost, all virtue 

is lost." 

This " shame being lost" is called by some grammarians a parti- 
cipial phrase ; by others, an abridged participial clause, standing 
for "As shame is lost." Therefore, " all virtue is lost, as shame 
is lost;" the second clause modifying the first. "On arriving in 
London, I went to see Madame Tussaud's Exhibition." These first 
four words form another such participial phrase or abridged parti- 
cipial clause, modifying went: "I went, on arriving in London 
(when I arrived in London), to see Madame Tussaud's Exhibi- 
tion." — This absolute case is something like what other grammarians 
call the independent case: "Charles, mind what you are about. 
Sir, I deny the charge. I have seen a wax figure of Cobbett, 
boys, at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition." Charles, Sir, hoys, are 
here said to be in the independent case, because they have no 
bearing on any other part of the sentence. These words may, 
however, be resolved into the nominative case, thus: To you, 
whose name is Charles, I have this to say : mind what you are 
about. To you, who are a Sir— to you, who are boys, etc. 
Eemember, therefore, that any word standing alone like these, or 
in an exclamation — O Roscoe! Roscoe! what an ass you have 
made of yourself! — is said to be in the independent case. 

192. Owing to not seeing the use and power of this it 
in their true light, many persons, after long puzzling, 
think they must make the pronouns which immediately 
follow conform to the cases which the verbs and pre- 
positions of the sentence demand. " It is them, and not 
the people, whom I address myself io." "It was him, 
and not the other man, that I sought after^ The prepo- 
sitions to and after demand an objective case; and they 
have it in the words whom and that. The Pronouns 
which follow the it and the verb to he must always be in 
the nominative case. And, therefore, in the above ex- 
amples, it should be, "It is they, and not the other 
people;" "It was he, and not the other man." 

193. This it with its verb to be is sometimes employed 
with the preposition for, with singular force and effect. 
"Ji5 is for the guilty to live in fear, to skulk and to hang 



126 Syntax, 

tlieir heads ; but /or the innocent it is to enjoy ease and 
tranquilUty of mind, to scorn all disguise, and to carry 
themselves erect." This is much more forcible than to 
say, "The guilty generally Uve in fear," and so on, 
throughout the sentence. The word for, in this case, 
denotes appropriateness, or fitness; and the full expres- 
sion would be this : " To the state of being, or state of 
things called guiltiness, to live in fear is fitting, or is 
appropriate. '''' If you pay attention to the reason on which 
the use of these words is founded, you will never be at a 
loss to use them properly. 

194. The word it is the greatest troubler that I know 
of in language. It is so small, and so convenient, that 
few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare 
this word. Whenever they are at a loss for either a nomi- 
native or an objective to their sentence, they, without any 
kind of ceremony, clap in an it. A very remarkable in- 
stance of this pressing of poor it into actual service, con- 
trary to the laws of grammar and of sense, occurs in a 
piece of composition, where we might, with justice, insist 
on correctness. This piece is on the subject of grammar; 
it is a piece written by a doctor of divinity, and read by 
him to students in grammar and language in an academy ; 
and the very sentence that I am now about to quote is 
selected, by the author of a grammar, as testimony of 
high authority in favor of the excellence of his work. 
Surely, if correctness be ever to be expected, it must be 
in a case like this. I allude to two sentences in the 
" Charge of the Revekend Doctor Abekceombie to the 
Senior Class of the Philadelphia Academy," published in 
1806 ; which sentences have been selected and published 
by Mr. Lindley Murray, as a testimonial of the tnerits of 
his grammar ; and which sentences ai'e, by Mr. Murray, 
given to us in the following words: "The unwearied 
exertions of this gentleman have done more towards elu- 
cidating the obscurities, and embellishing the structure 



As Melating to Pronouns. 127 

of our language, than any other loriter on the subject. 
Such a work has long been wanted ; and, from the success 
with which it is executed, cannot be too highly appre- 
ciated." 

195. As, in the learned Doctor's opinion, obscTirities 
can be elucidated, and, as, in the same opinion, Mk. Mur- 
ray is an able hand at this kind of work, it would not be 
amiss were the grammarian to try his skill upon this 
article from the hand of his dignified eulogist ; for here 
is, if one may use the expression, a constellation of 
obscmities. Our poor oppressed it, which we find forced 
into the Doctor's service in the second sentence, relates 
to " such a worJc,^'' though this work is nothing that has 
an existence, notwithstanding it is said to be " executed^ 
In the first sentence, the " exertions " become, all of a 
sudden, a '■'■ toriter f the exertions have done more than 
" any other writer ;" for, mind you, it is not the gentleman 
that has done anything ; it is " the exertions " that have 
done what is said to be done. The word gentleman is in 
the possessive case, and has nothing to do with the action 
of the sentence. Let us give the sentence a turn, and 
the Doctor and the grammarian will hear how it will 
sound. " This gentleman's exertions have done more 
than any other writer!''' This is upon a level with " This 
gentleman's dog has killed more hares than any other 
sportsman^ No doubt Doctor Abercrombie meant to 
say, "the exertions of this gentleman have done more 
than those of any other writer. Such a work as this 
gentleman's has long been wanted : his work, seeing the 
successful manner of its execution, cannot be too highly 
commended." 3feant! No doubt at all of that! And 
when we hear a Hampshire ploughboy say, " Poll Cherry- 
cheek have giv'd I thick handkecher," we know very well 
that he means to say, " Poll Cherrycheek has given me 
this handkerchief ;" and yet, we are but too apt to laugh 
at him, and to call him ignorant ; which is wrong ; be- 



128 Syntax, 

cause he has no pretensions to a knowledge of grammar, 
and he may be very skillful as a ploughboy. However, 
we will not laugh at Doctor Abeeckombie, whom I knew, 
many years ago, for a very kind and worthy man, and 
who baptized your elder brother and elder sister. But if 
we may, in any case, be allowed to laugh at the ignorance 
of our fellow-creatures, that case certainly does arise when 
we see a professed grammarian, the author of voluminous 
precepts and examples on the subject of grammar, pro- 
ducing, in imitation of the possessors of invaluable medi- 
cal secrets, testimonials vouching for the efficacy of his 
literary panacea, and when, in those very testimonials, we 
find most flagrant instances of bad grammar. 

196. However, my dear James, let this strong and 
striking instance of the misuse of the word it serve you 
in the way of caution. Never put an it upon paper with- 
out thinking well of what you are about. When I see 
many its in a page, I always tremble for the writer. 

197. We now come to the second class of Pronouns ; 
that is so say, the Relative Pronouns, of which you have 
had some account in Letter VI, paragraphs 62, 63, 64, 
65, and 66 ; which paragraphs you should now read over 
again vsdth attention. 

198. Who, which becomes tohose in the possessive case, 
and whom in the objective case, is, in its use, confined to 
rational beings; for though some writers do say, "the 
country lohose fertiUty is great," and the like, it is not 
con-ect. We must say, "the country the fertility of 
which.'''' But if y^Q personify ; if, for instance, we call a 
nation a she, or the sun a he, we must then, if we have 
need of relative Pronouns, take these, or the word that, 
which is a relative applicable to rational as well as irra- 
tional and even inanimate beings. 

It is now correct to say "the country whose fertility is great;" 
for it is a much more direct and easy way of speaking than the 
other. This form was begun by the poets, and is now constantly 
used by prose-writers. 



As Relating to Pronouns. 129 

199. The errors which are most frequent in the use of 
these relative Pronouns arise from not taking care to use 
who and whom, when they are respectively demanded by 
the verbs or prepositions. '^To who did you speak? 

Whom is come to-day ? " These sentences are too glai*- 
ingly wrong to pass from our pens to the paper. But, as 
in the ease of persona] Pronouns, when the relatives are 
placed, in the sentence, at a distance from their ante- 
cedents, or verbs or prepositions, the ear gives us no 
assistance. " Who, of all the men in the world, do you 
think I sato, the other day? Who, for the sake of his 
numerous services, the office was given to." In both 
these cases it ought to be whom. Bring the verb in the 
first, and the preposition in the second case, closer to the 
relative ; as, who I sow ; to who the office %oas given ; 
and you will see the error at once. But take care! 
" Whom, of all men in the world, do you think was chosen 
to be sent as an ambasssador "? Whom, for the sake of 
his numerous services, had an office of honor bestowed 
upon him." These are nominative cases, and ought to 
have who ; that is to say, ^^who was chosen ; who had an 
office^ I will not load you with numerous examples. 
Bead again about the nominatii^e and objective cases in 
Letter V. Apply your reason to the subject. Who is 
the nominative, and whom the objective. Think well 
about the matter, and you will want no more examples. 

200. There is, however, an erroneous way of employing 
whom, which I must point out to your particular atten- 
tion, because it is so often seen in very good writers, and 
because it is very deceiving. "The Duke of Argyle, 
than whom no man was more hearty in the cause." 
" Cromwell, than whom no man was better skilled in arti- 
fice." A hundred such phrases might be collected from 
Hume, Blackstone, and even from Doctors Blair and 
Johnson. Yet they are bad grammar. In all such cases, 
who should be made use of ; for it is nominative and not 



130 Syntax^ 

objective. "No man was moi*e hearty in the cause than 
he loas ; no man was better skilled in artifice than he 
wasy It is a very common Parhament-house phrase, and 
therefore presumptively corrupt; but it is a Doctor 
Johnson phrase too; "Pope, than whom few men had 
more vanity." The Doctor did not say, "Myself, than 
whotn few men have been found more base, having, in my 
Dictionary, described a pensioner as a slave of state, and 
having afterwards myself become a pensioner." 

201. I differ, as to this matter, from Bishop Lowth, 
who says that "the relative ^oAo, having reference to no 
verb or preposition understood, but only to its antece- 
dent, when it follows than, is always in the objective case; 
even though the Pronoun, if substituted in its place, 
would be in the nominative." And then he gives an in- 
stance from Milton. "Beelzebub, than whom, Satan 
except, none higher sat." It is curious enough that this, 
sentence of the Bishop is, itself, ungrammatical ! Our 
poor unfortunate it is so placed as to make it a matter of 
doubt whether the Bishop meant it to relate to who, or to 
its antecedent. However, we know his meaning; but, 
though he says that who, when it follows than, is always 
in the objective case, he gives us no reason for this de- 
parture from a clear general principle ; unless we are to 
regard as a reason the example of Milton, who has com- 
mitted many hundreds, if not thousands, of grammatical 
errors, many of which the Bishop himself has pointed out. 
There is a sort of side-wind attempt at a reason in the 
words, " having reference to no verb or preposition under- 
stood." I do not see the reason, even if this could be; 
for it appears to me impossible that a Noun or Pronoun 
can exist in a grammatical state without having reference 
to some verb or preposition, either expressed or under- 
stood. What is meant by Milton? "Than Beelzebub 
none sat higher, except Satan." And when, in order to 
avoid the repetition of the word Beelzebub, the relative 



As Relating to Pronouns. 131 

becomes necessary, the full construction must be, "no 
devil sat higher than loho sat, except Satan;" and not 
"no devil sat higher than whom sat." The supposition 
that there can be a Noini or Pronoun vrhich has reference 
to no verb, and no preposition, is certainly a mistake. 

Mr. Swinton quotes these two sentences about Pope and Beelze- 
bub, and then says : ' ' This construction must be regarded as 
anomalous.; but it has been used by so many reputable authors 
that we can scarcely refuse to accept it." It seems to me that this 
is one of those cases where long usage has made a faulty expression 
appea/r or sound correct ; just as there are many people who think 
"it is me" sounds much better than "it is I." I am sure "than 
whom" is now much more rarely used than formerly. 

202. That, as a relative, may, as we have seen, be ap- 
pHed either to persons or things ; but it has no possessive 
case, and no change to denote the other two cases. We 
say, "the man that gives, and the man that a thing is 
given toy But there are some instances when it can 
hardly be called proper to use that instead of loho or 
whom. Thus, directly after a proper name, as in Hume : 
"The Queen gave orders for taking into custody the 
Duke of Northumberland, who fell on his knees to the 
Earl of Arundel, that arrested him." W7>,o would have 
been much better, though there was a who just before in 
the sentence. In the same author: "Douglas, who had 
prepared his people, and that was bent upon taking his 
part openly." This never ought to be, though we see it 
continually. Either may do ; but both never ought to be 
relatives of the same antecedent, in the same sentence. 
And, indeed, it is very awkward, to say the least of it, to 
use both in the same sentence, though relating to different 
antecedents, if all these be names of rational beings. " The 
Lords, who made the first false report, and the Commons, 
that seemed to vie with their Lordships in falsehood, be- 
came equally detested." That, as a relative, cannot take 
the preposition or verb immediately before it. I may say 
" The man to whom I gave a book ; " but I cannot say, " the 



132 Syntax, 

man to that I gave a book ; " nor "the knife to that I put a 
handle." "Having defeated vihotn, he remained quiet;" 
but we cannot, in speaking of persons, say, "Having de- 
feated that, he remained quiet." 

203. Which, as a relative Pronoun, is applied to irra- 
tional beings only, and, as to those beings, ii may be em- 
ployed indifferently with that, except in the cases where 
the relative comes directly after a verb or a preposition, 
in the manner just spoken of. We say, "the town, the 
horse, the tree, lohich/ or to which f and so on. And 
we say, "the town, the tree, the horse, that;'''' but not to 
OT for that. 

204. We may, in speaking of nouns of multitude, when 
the multitude consists of rational creatures, and when we 
choose to consider it as a singular noun, make use of toho 
or whom, or of which, just as we please. We may say, 
"the crowd which was going up the street;" or "the 
crowd ^oho was going up the street ;" but we cannot 
make use of both in the same sentence and relating to 
the same noun. Therefore, we cannot say, " the crowd 
loho was going up the street and which was making a 
great noise." We must take the who, or the which, in 
both places. If such noun of multitude ba used in the 
plural number, we then go on with the idea of the 
rationality of the individuals in our minds ; and therefore 
we make use of ^oho and whom. " The assembly, loho 
rejected the petition, but to whom, another was immedi- 
ately presented." 

205. Who, whose, v^hom, and which, are employed in 
asking questions ; to which, in this capacity, we must add 
what. "Who is in the house? Whose gun is that? 

W7iom do you love best? What has happened to-day?" 
What means, generally, as a relative, " the thing which/" 
as, " Give me what I want." It may be used in the nom- 
inative and in the objective case: "What happens to-day 
may happen next week ; but I know not to lohat we shall 



As JRelating to Pronouns. 133 

come at last ;" or, " The thing lohich happens to-day may 
happen next week ; but I know not the thing ichich we 
shall come to at last." 

This little word what may, sometimes, curiously enough, be both 
subject and object in the same sentence. " Give what is proper. 
Tell me what was done." In the first sentence, what is the object 
oigive and the subject of is proper ; and may be set down as equal 
to that which. In the second sentence, what is the object of tell 
and the subject of was done; me being the indirect object, or 
adverbial phrase, meaning to me. You may also say that the whole 
clause wJiat loas done is the object of tell, and call it an objective 
clause. 

Notice that the relative pronoun is sometimes omitted, but only 
in the objective case ; as, You are the boy (whom) I mean; this is 
the book (that) I want. This omission of words, which gram- 
marians call an ellipsis, is very common in our tongue ; as, Dinner 
done, we walked into the garden ; that argument granted, I pro- 
ceed to the next. 

The place of the relative pronoun is a mighty important matter. 
Somebody sent Mr. White this striking instance of such misplace- 
ment : ' ' Just now, I saw a man talking to the Rev. Mr. Blank, 
who was so drunk that he could hardly stand." The last two 
clauses were intended, of course, to come after man, who was 
drunk, and not the reverend gentleman. Here are some more 
examples from Greene's Grammar : ' ' Mr. Brown needs a physician 
who is sick. The oranges came in a basket which we ate. Found, 
a gold watch by a gentleman with steel hands. A man brought 
home my Newfoundland dog in his shirt-sleeves." These last two 
sentences have no relative pronoun, but they are good examples of 
misplacement of words. " I told you to do that this morning " is 
a very different thing from "I told you, this morning, to do that.'' 

Here is an advertisement which I have just noticed in the 
Tribune : ' ' Conditioned scholars coached for fall examinations 
during the summer months at Tarrytown." These words, as they 
stand, mean that the scholars are to be coached (that is, prepared) 
for fall examinations, taking place during the summer months at 
Tarrytown ; but the advertiser did not mean anything of the kind. 
He meant to say, ' ' Conditioned scholars coached, during the sum- 
mer mouths, at Tarrytown, for fall examinations." You will say 
that the fall examinations could not be during the summer months. 
No ; but the words say so. 



134 Syntax, 

206. Which, though in other cases it cannot be em- 
ployed as a relative with nouns which are the names of 
rational beings, is, with such nouns, employed in asking 
questions ; as, " The tyrants allege that the petition was 
disrespectful, ^^^^■c^ of the tyrants ?" Again: "One of 
the petitioners had his head cleaved by the yeomam-y. 

Which T'' That is to say, "Which of the petitioners 
was itf 

207. What, when used in asking for a repetition of 
what has been said — as, what? — means, "Tell me that 
lohich, or the thing tchich, you have said." This word is 
used, and with great force, in the way of exclamation: 
" What ! rob us of our right of suffrage, and then, when 
we pray to have our right restored to us, shut us up in 
dungeons!" The full meaning is this: " What do they do? 
They rob us of our right." 

208. It is not, in general, advisable to crowd these rela- 
tives together ; but it sometimes happens that it is done. 
" Who, that has any sense, can believe such palpable false- 
hoods *? What, that can be invented, can disguise these 
falsehoods ? By whom, that you ever heard of, was a par- 
don obtained from the mercy of a tyrant ? Some men's 
rights have been taken from them by force and by genius, 
but whose, that the world ever heard of before, were taken 
away by ignorance and stupidity?" 

209. Whosoever, whosesoever, tohomsoever, whatsoever, 
whichsoever, follow the rules applicable to the original 
words. The so is an adverb, which, in its general accep- 
tation, means in like manner ; and ever, which is also an 
adverb, means, at any time, at all times, or always. These 
two words, thus joined in whosoever, mean, who in any 
case that may be / and so of the other three words. W^e 
sometimes omit the so, and say, vihoever, whoinever, what- 
ever, and even whosever. It is a mere abbreviation. The 
so is understood ; and it is best not to omit to write it. 
Sometimes the soever is separated from the Pronoun: 



As Helating to Pronouns. 135 

" "What man soever he might be." But the main thing is 
to nnderstand the reason nipon which the use of these 
words stands ; for, if you understand that, you will always 
use the words properly. 

210. The Demonstrative Pronouns have been described 
in Letter VI, paragraph 67 ; and I have very little to add 
to what is there said upon the subject. They never 
change then- endings to denote gender or case ; and the 
proper appHcation of them is so obvious that it requires 
little to be said about it. However, we shall hear more of 
these Pronouns when we come to the Syntax of Verbs. 
One observation I will make here, however, because it will 
serve to caution you against the commission of a very 
common error. You will hardly say, '■'•Them that write;" 
but you may say, as many do, " "We ought always to have 
great regard for them who are wise and good." It 
ought to be, "/br those who are wise and good;" because 
the word persons is understood : " those persons who are 
wise and good ;" and it is bad grammar to say, " them per- 
sons who are wise and good." But observe, in another 
sense, this sentence would be correct. If I be speaking 
of particular persons, and if my object be to make you 
understand that they are wise and good, and also that I 
love them • then I say, very correctly, "I love them, who 
are wise and good." Thus : " The father has two children ; 
he loves them, who are wise and good ; and they love him, 
who is very indulgent." It is the meaning that must be 
your guide, and reason must tell you what is the meaning. 
"They, -who can write, save a great deal of bodily labor," 
is very different from '■^ Those who can write save a great 
deal of bodily labor." The those stands for those persons ; 
that is to say, any persons, persons in general, who can 
write: whereas, the they, as here used, relates to some 
particular persons; and the sentence means that these 
particular persons are able to write, and, by that means, 
they savo a great deal of bodily labor. Doctor Blair, in 



136 Syntax, 

his 21st Lecture, has fallen into an error of this sort: 
thus, "These two paragraphs are extremely worthy of 
Mk. Addison, and exhibit a style, which they, who can 
successfully imitate, may esteem themselves happy." It 
ought to be those instead of they. But this is not the 
only fault in this sentence. "Why say " extremely worthy?'** 
Worthiness is a quality which hardly admits of degrees, 
and surely it does not admit of extremes ! Then, again, 
at the close : to esteem, is to prize, to set value on, to 
value highly. How, then, can men *' esteem themselves 
happy?" How can thej prize themselves happy? How 
can they highly value themselves happy ? My dear James, 
let chambermaids, and members of the House of Commons, 
and learned Doctors, write thus: be you content with 
plain words which convey your meaning ; say that a thing 
is quite worthy of a man ; and that men may deem them- 
selves happy. — It is truly curious that Lindley Murkay 
should, even in the motto in the title-page of his JEnglish 
Gramm,ar, have selected a sentence containing a gram- 
matical error ; still more curious that he should have 
found this sentence in Doctor Blair's Lectures on Lan- 
guage ; and most curious of all that this sentence should 
be intended to inculcate the great utility of correctness in 
the composing of sentences. Here, however, are the 
proofs of this combination of curious circumstances: 
'"'■They who are learning to compose, and arrange their 
sentences with accuracy and order, are learning, at the 
same time, to think with acciiracy and order." Poh! 
Never thiuk a man either learned or good merely on 
account of his being called a Doctor. 

211. The Indeterminate Pronouns have been enumerated 
in Letter VI, parapraph 71. They are sometimes Adjec- 
tives, as is stated in that paragraph. Whoever, whatever, 
and whichever (that is, whosoever, whatsoever, whichso- 
ever), though relatives, are indeterminate too. But, in- 
deed, it signifies little how these words are classed. It 



As Helatlng to Pronouns. 137 

is the use of them that we ought to look to. Every, 
which I have now reckoned amongst these Pronouns, is 
never, now-a-days, used loithout a noun, and is therefore, 
in fact, an -adjective. The error that is most frequently 
committed in using these Pronouns is the putting of the 
plural verb or ^:>ZwraZ Pronoun after nouns preceded by 
every, each, or either; especially in the case of every : as, 
•' every man ; every body ; every house." These are under- 
stood to mean, all the men, all the people, all the houses; 
but, only one man, one body, one house, is spoken of, and 
therefore the verb ought to be in the singular ; as, " every- 
body is disgusted ; " and not " every body are disgusted." 

212. Before you use any of these words, you should 
think well on their true meaning; for, if you do this, you 
will seldom commit errors in the use of them. Doctor 
Johnson, in his Rambler, No. 177, has this passage: 
'■'■Every one of these virtuosos looked on all his associates 
as wretches of depraved taste and narrow notions. Their 
conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their be- 
havior brutal, their merriment bluntly sarcastic, and their 
seriousness gloomy and suspicious." Now these theirs 
certainly relate to every one, though the author meant, 
without doubt, that they should relate to the whole hody 
o/ virtuosos, including the every one. The word there- 
fore adds to the confusion. The virtuosos were, there- 
fore, fretful and waspish. What for ? Was it because 
every one saw his associates in a bad light ? How can my 
thinking meanly of others make their conversation fretful ? 
If the Doctor had said, " These virtuosos looked on each 
other'''' . . . the meaning would have been cleai". 

213. The Pronoun either, which means one of two, is 
very often improperly employed. It is sometimes used 
to denote one of three or more, which is always incorrect. 
We say, "■either the dog, or the ca^y" but not ^^ either the 
dog, the cat, or the pig.'' Suppose some one to ask me 
which I choose to have, mutton, veal, or woodcock; I 



138 Syntax, 

answer any one of them ; and not either of them. Doctor 
Blair laas used any one where he ought to have used 
either: "The two words are not altogether synonymous; 
yet, in the present case, any one of them would have been 
sufficient." 

214. In concluding this Letter on the Syntax of Pro- 
nouns, I must observe that I leave many of these inde- 
terminate Pronouns unnoticed in a particular manner. 
To notice every one individually could answer no purpose 
except that of swelling the size of a book ; a thing which 
I most anxiously wish to avoid. 

Sometimes one cannot help using either ... or with reference 
to one of three things. Expressions lilce the following will 
be found in the works of the hest authors : Either the Romans, 
the Greeks, or the Persians. Neither the planters, the poor 
whites, nor the blacks. 

Nearly all the grammars set down the rule that one must use 
each other with reference to two persons, and one anotlier with refer- 
ence to more than two. I have not, however, found a single author, 
good or bad, that adheres to this rule. When you are speaking of 
three persons, it is perhaps better to say, "They love one another," 
than "They love each other;" but sometimes these words have to 
be repeated so frequently that it would be very disagreeable to use 
always the same word. In Punch's Address to Brother Jonathan, 
these words occur almost interchangeably: "Let us quarrel, Ameri- 
can kinsmen. Let us plunge into war. We have been friends too 
long. We have too highly promoted each other's wealth and pros- 
perity. We are too plethoric ; we want depletion ; to which end 
let us cut one another's throats. Let us sink each other's shipping, 
burn ea/-jh other's arsenals, destroy each other's property at large. 
Let our banks break while we smite and slay one another. Let us 
maim and mutilate one another ; let us make of each other miserable 
objects," etc.— Notice that eacA has a restricting sense, ande«eryan 
extended or general one. "He examined each one; he examined 
every one." The first means cocIl single one; the second means 
them all, in a general sense. ' ' Here are ten lazy boys ; give each 
one a caning. Give a caning to every lazy boy in the school." 

That error of making verbs and pronouns agree with each and 
every, as if these words were plural, is as common to-day as it was 
in Cobbett's time. How often we hear such expressions as, 



As Relating to Adjectives. 139 

"Everybody have their faults — Every one are dissatisfied — Let 
each boy and girl take up their pens," etc. These are all wrong. 
Even if the noun with each or every be repeated, the verb or pro- 
noun must be in the singular; as, "Each day and each hour has 
its duties ; every man and woman has his or her peculiarities ; every 
window and every house-top was crowded with spectators." Be- 
cause, in these instances, the predicate or verb is understood after 
the first noun : Every window was crowded and every house-top 
was crowded. 



LETTER XVIII. 

SYNTAX, AS BELATING TO ADJECTIVES. 

215. By this time, my dear James, you will hardly want 
to be reminded of the nature of Adjectives. However, it 
may not be amiss for you to read again attentively the 
whole of Letter VII. 

216. Adjectives, having no relative effect, containing no 
representative quality, have not the dangerous power, 
possessed by pronouns, of throwing whole sentences into 
confusion, and of perverting or totally destroying the 
writer's meaning. For this reason, there is httle to be 
said respecting the using of Adjectives. 

217. When you make use of an Adjective in the way of 
comparison, take care that there be a congruity, or fitness, 
in the things or qualities compared. Do not say that a 
thing is deeper than it is hroad or long; or that a man is 
taller than he is wise or rich. Hume says, " The principles 
of the Reformation were deeper in the prince's mind than 
to be easily eradicated.'''' This is no comparison at all. 
It is nonsense. 

218. When Adjectives are used as nouns, they must, in 
all respects, be treated as nouns. " The guilty, the inno- 
cent, the rich, the poor, are mixed together." But we 
cannot say " a guilty," meaning to use the word guilty as 
a noun. 



140 Syntax, 

219. If wo or more Adjectives be used as applicable to 
the same noun, there must be a comma, or commas, to 
separate them ; as, " a poor, unfortunate man ;" unless and 
or or be made use of, for then the comma or commas may 
be omitted ; as, " a lofty and large and excellent house." 

220. Be rather sparing than liberal in the use of Adjec- 
tives. One which expresses your meaning is better than 
two, which can, at best, do no more than express it, while 
the additional one may possibly do harm. But the error 
most common in the use of Adjectives is the endeavoring 
to strengthen the Adjective by putting an adverb before 
it, and which adverb conveys the notion that the quality 
or property expressed by the Adjective admits of degrees ; 
as, " very honest, extretnely just." A man may be wiser 
than another wise man ; an act may be more wicked than 
another wicked act; but a man cannot be more honest 
than another ; every man who is not honest must be dis- 
honest ; and every act which is not just must be unjust. 
" Very right," and " very wrong," are very common ex- 
pressions, but they are both incorrect. Some expressions 
may be more com,mon than others ; but that which is not 
right is wrong; or that which is not wrong is right. 
There are here no intermediate degrees. We should laugh 
to hear a man say, " You are a little right, I am a good 
deal wrong; that person is honest in a trijiing degree; 
that act was too just." But our ears are accustomed to 
the adverbs of exaggeration. Some wi'iters deal in these 
to a degree that tires the ear and offends the understand- 
ing. "With them, everything is excessively or immensely 
or extremely or vastly or surprisingly or wonderfully or 
abundantly, or the like. The notion of such writers is 
that these words give strength to what they are saying. 
This is a great error. Strength must be found in the 
thought, or it will never be found in the words. Big- 
sounding words, without thoughts corresponding, are 
effort without effect. 



As Relating to Adjectives. 141 

221. Care must be taken, too, not to use such adjectives 
as are improper to be applied to the nouns along with 
which they are used. " Good virtues ; had vices ; painfid 
tooth-aches ; pleasing pleasures." These are staringly 
absurd; but, amongst a select society of empty heads, 
" moderate Reform " has long been a fashionable expres- 
sion; an expression which has been well criticised by 
asking the gentlemen who use it how they would like to 
obtain moderate justice in a court of law, or to meet with 
m^oderate chastity in a wife. 

222. To secure yourself against the risk of committing 
such errors, you have only to take care to ascertain the 
full meaning of every word you employ. 

To show you how easy our English is, in this part of its gram- 
mar, as compared with other languages, I shall ask you to look at 
this one little sentence: "The good boy loves a good book and a 
good friend; to good bread and butter he gives not a thought." 
Here the adjective ^oodt occurs four times without ever once chang- 
ing its form ; now you will see that this little word, in this one 
little sentence, changes five different times in German : Der gute 
Knabe liebt ein gutes Buch und einen guten Freund ; gutem Brod 
und guter Butter gibt er keinen Gedanken. "What do you think 
of that, my lad ? Would you not think that the poor German, 
when he speaks, would be constantly thinking of his genders, 
numbers, and cases ? "Would you not think he would be apt to 
get things mixed? But he doesn't; he speaks his language in 
correct form, as naturally as a canary-bird sings in correct tune ; 
for he has learned to speak as the canary has learned to sing. 

This is why some writers, like Mr. Grant "White, say that the 
English language has no grammar; that is, because its words have 
few or no declensions, or changes to indicate person, number, gen- 
der, case, mood, and tense. It has, however, a grammar of its 
own ; and the proof of it is this : Notwithstanding the fact that it 
has so few declensions, as compared with German, it is just as 
hard, if not harder, for an adult German to learn to speak and 
write our English in a perfectly correct and idiomatic manner, 
as it is for an adult American or Briton to learn to speak and write 
German in a similar manner. Of the two or three millions of 
native Germans who are now in the United States, how many of 



142 Syntax, 

them, do you think, are able to speak our English in such a man- 
ner as to have their words taken down on the spot, and printed 
just as spoken? I do not think there are half a dozen; IJcnow of 
but one ; and that is Mr. Carl Sohuez. When I say native Ger- 
mans, I mean, of course, those who, like him, have come to this 
country and learned the language after attaining manhood. Those 
who come here in infancy, or in childhood, become, in fact, Ameri- 
cans. Of the others, not one in ten thousand ever learns to speak 
like a native. As an offset to Mr. Schurz, we have at least one 
Anaerican who may be said to have spoken and written German 
as perfectly as Mr. Schurz speaks and writes English ; and that is 
our lamented Bataed Tatlok. 

It is very easy to learn enough English to talk about one's daily 
wants ; to ask for meat and drink ; to count money ; to buy and 
sell ; and to inquire one's way ; it is far easier for a German to 
learn this much in English than for an American to learn as much 
in German ; but it is, I think, as hard for the German to master the 
English as it is for the Englishman to master the German. The Ger- 
man language, in utterance and in construction, is, like the people 
who speak it, almost as regular, formal, and law-conforming as 
mathematics ; while our English, in utterance and in construction, 
is, like the typical Englishman, though grounded in law and prin- 
ciple, essentially a mass of peculiarities, irregularities, and eccen- 
tricities. 



LETTEE XIX. 

SYNTAX, AS BELATING TO VERBS. 

223. Let us, my dear James, get well through ihis Let- 
ter ; and then we may, I think, safely say that we know 
something of grammar: a little more, I hope, than is 
known by the greater part of those who call themselves 
Latin and Greek scholars, and who dignify their having 
studied these languages with the name of ^'■Liberal JSdu- 
cationy 

224. There can be no sentence, there can be no sense 
in words, unless there be a Verb either expressed or un- 
derstood. Each of the other Parts of Speech may alter- 



As Melating to Verbs. 143 

nately be dispensed with ; but the Verb never can. The 
Verb being, then, of so much importance, you will do well 
to read again, before you proceed further, paragraphs 23, 
24, 25, and 26, in Letter HI, and the whole of Letter 

vni. 

225. Well, then, we have now to see how Verbs are 
used in sentences, and how a misuse of them affects the 
meaning of the writer. There must, you will bear in 
mind, always be a Verb expressed or understood. One 
would think that this was not the case in the direction 
written on a post letter. "To John Goldsmith, Esq., 
Hambledon, Hampshke." But what do these words 
really mean? Why, they mean, "This letter is to he 
delivered to John Goldsmith, who is an Esquire, who lives 
at Hambledon, which is in Hampshu-e." Thus, there are 
no less than five Verbs where we thought there was no 
Verb at all. " Sir, I beg you to give me a bit of bread." 
The sentence which follows the Sir is complete ; but the 
Sir appears to stand wholly without connection. How- 
ever, the full meaning is this : "I beg you, who are a Sir, 
to give me a bit of bread." "What, John?" That is to 
say, " What is said by you, whose name is John?" Again, 
in the date of a letter ; " Long Island, March 25, 1818." 
That is : "Z am now writing in Long Island ; this is the 
twenty-fifth day of March, and this month is in the one 
thousand eight hundred and eighteenth year of the Chris- 
tian era." 

226. Now, if you take time to reflect a little on this 
matter, you will never be puzzled for a moment by those 
detached words, to suit which grammarians have invented 
vocative cases and cases absolute, and a great many other 
appellations, with which they, puzzle themselves, and 
confuse and bewilder and torment those who read their 
books. (See paragraph 191.) 

227. We almost always, whether in speaking or in writ- 
ing, leave out some of the words which are necessary to a 



144 Syntax, 

full expression of our meaning. This leaving out is called 
the -Ellipsis. JEllipsis is, in geometry, an oval figure ; and 
the compasses, in the tracing of the line of this figure, 
do not take their full sweep all round, as in the tracing of 
a circle, but they make skips and leave out parts of the 
area, or surface, which parts would be included in the 
circle. Hence it is, that the skipping over, or leaving out, 
in speaking or in writing, is called het Ellipsis ; without 
making use of which, we, as you will presently see, 
scarcely ever open our lips or move our pens. " He told 
me that he had given John the gun which the gunsmith 
brought the other night." That is: "He told to me that 
he had given to John the gun, which the gunsmith brought 
to this place, or hiiiher, on the other night." This would, 
you see, be very cumbrous and disagreeable ; and, there- 
fore, seeing that the meaning is quite clear without the 
words marked by italics, we leave these words out. But y 
we may easily go too far in this elliptical way, and say: 
"He told me he had given John the gun the gunsmith 
brought the other night." This is leaving the sentence 
too bare, and making it to be, if not nonsense, hardly 
sense. 

228. Reserving some further remarks, to be made by- 
and-by, on the Ellipsis, I have now to desire that, always, 
when you are examining a sentence, you will take into 
your view the words that are left out. If you have any 
doubt as to the correctness of the sentence, fill it up by 
putting in the left-out words, and, if there be an error you 
will soon discover it. 

229. Keeping in mind these remarks on the subject of 
understood words, you will now listen attentively to me, 
while I endeavor to explain to you the manner in which 
Verbs ought to be used in sentences. 

230. The first thing is to come at a clear understanding 
with regard to the cases of nouns and pronouns as con- 
nected, in use, with Verbs and pi'epositions / for on this 



As Helating to Verbs. 145 

connection depends a great deal. Verbs govern, as it is 
called, nouns and pronouns; that is to say, they some- 
times cause, or make, nouns or pronouns to be in a cer- 
tain case. Nouns do not vary their endings to denote 
different cases ; but pronouns do ; as you have seen in 
Letter VI. Therefore, to illustrate this matter, I will 
take the pronoun personal of the third person singular, 
which in the nominative case is he, possessive case his, 
objective case him. 

231. When a man (it is the same with regard to any 
other person or thing) is the actor, or doer, the man is in 
the nominative case, and the corresponding pronoun is 
he ; "^e strikes." The same case exists when the man is 
the receiver or endurer, of an action. "iZe is stricken." It 
is still the same case when the man is said to he in any 
state or condition. ^^He is unhappy." Indeed, there is 
no difference in these two latter instances; for "Ae is 
stricken" is no other than to say that "he is in a state or 
condition called stricken.'''' Observe, too, that in these two 
latter instances, the he is followed by the Verb to be : he 
is stricken, he is unhappy; and observe, moreover, that 
whenever the Verb to be is used, the receiver, or be-er (if 
I may make a word) is, and must be, in the nominative 
case. But now let me stop a little to guard you against 
a puzzle. I say, "the Verb to 6ey" but I do not mean 
those ttco words always. When I say the Verb to be, I 
may mean, as in the above examples, is. This is the Verb 
to be in the third person singular. "I write.''^ I should 
say that here is the pronoun I and the Verb tO' write / 
that is to say, it is the Verb to write in one of its forms. 
The to is the sign of the infinitive mode ; and the Verb in 
that state is the root, or the foundation, from which all 
the different parts or forms proceed. Having guarded 
ourselves against this puzzler, let us come back to our 
nominative case. The actor, the doer, the receiver of an 
action, the be-er, must always be in the nominative case ; 
7 



146 Syntax^ 

and it is called nominative case because it is that state, or 
situation, or case, in which the person or thing is named 
without being pointed out as the object, or end, of any 
foregoing action or purpose; as, "Ae strikes; he is 
stricken ; he is unhappy." This word nominative is not 
a good word; acting and being case, would be much 
better. This word nominative, like most of the terms 
used in teaching grammar, has been taken from the Latin. 
It is bad ; it is inadequate to its intended purpose ; but it 
is used ; and if we understand its meaning, or, rather, 
what it is designed to mean, its intrinsic insufficiency is 
of no consequence. Thus, I hope, then, that we know 
what the nom.inative is. "He writes; he sings; he is 
sick ; he is well ; he is smitten ; he is good ; " and so on, 
always with a he. 

232. But (and now pay attention) if the action pass 
from the actor to a person or thing acted upon, and if 
there be no part of the Verb to be employed, then the 
person or thing acted upon is in the objective case; as, 
"He smites him,; he strikes him ; hQ kills him." In 
these instances we wish to show, not only an action that 
is performed and the person who performs it, but also the 
person upon whom it is performed. Here, therefore, we 
state the actor, the action, and the object ; and the person 
or thing which is the object, is in the objective case. The 
Verb is said, in such instances, to govern the noun or 
pronoun ; that is to say, to make it, or force it, to be in 
the objective case ; and to make us use him, instead of he. 

This is sittiply another way of saying that the transitive verb 
puts the noun or pronoun which follows it in the objective case, 
and that a sentence with a transitive verb must consist of subject, 
predicate, and object; as, Garfield defeated Hancock. (See par. 48.) 

233. However, I remember that I was very much puz- 
zled on account of these cases. I saw that when "Peter 
was smitten,'''' Peter was in the nominative case ; but that 
when any person or thing '■'•had smitten Peter," Peter was 



As Relating to Verbs. 147 

in the objective case. This puzzled me much; and the 
loose and imperfect definitions of my grammar-book 
yielded me no clue to a disentanglement. Reflection on 
the reason for this apparent inconsistency soon taught 
me, however, that, in the first of these cases, Peter is 
merely named, or nominated as the receiver of an action ; 
and that, in the latter instance, Peter is mentioned as 
the object of the action of some other person or thing, 
expressed or understood. I perceived that, in the first 
instance, '■'■Peter is smitten,'''' I had a complete sense. I 
was informed as to the person who had received an action, 
and also as to what sort of action he had received. And 
I perceived that, in the second instance, '■'■John has 
smitten Peter,^'' there was an actor who took possession of 
the use of the Verb, and made Peter the object of it; and 
that this actor, John, now took the nominative, and put 
Peter in the objective case. 

234. This puzzle was, however, hardly got over when 
another presented itself : for I conceived the notion that 
Peter was in the nominative only because no actor was 
mentioned at all in the sentence / but I soon discovered 
this to be an error; for I found that " Peter is smitten by 
John,'''' still left Peter in the nom,inative ; and that, if I 
used the pronoun, I must say, "Ae is smitten by John;" 
and not '■'■him is smitten by John." 

235. Upon this puzzle I dwelt a long time: a whole 
week, at least. For I was not content unless I could 
reconcile everything to reason; and I could see no reason 
for this. Peter, in this last instance, appeared to be the 
object, and there was the actor, John. My ear, indeed, 
assured me that it was right to say, '•'■He is smitten by 
John ;" but my reason doubted the information and assur- 
ances of my ear. 

236. At last, the little insignificant word by attracted 
my attention. This word, in this place, is a preposition. 
Ah ! that is it ! prepositions govern nouns and pronouns ; 



148 Syntax, 

that is to say, make them, to he in the objective case! So 
that John, who had plagued me so much, I found to be in 
the objective case ; and I found that, if I put him out, and 
put the pronoun in his place, I must say, " Peter is smit- 
ten by him.'''' 

237. Now, then, my dear James, do you clearly under- 
stand this? If you do not, have patience. Read and 
think, and weigh well every part of what I have here 
written: for, as you will immediately see, a clear under- 
standing with regard to the cases is one of the main inlets 
to a perfect knowledge of grammar. 

As soon as a verb is changed from the active-transitive to the 
passive voice, the subject becomes the object of the sentence ; as, 
" She loves him," active ; " She is loved by him," passive. 

Be careful to observe the difference between the object and the 
attribute. I remember I could not, for a long time, see the differ- 
ence in such sentences as these : " He is a Jew. She loves a Jew." 
I thought that "a Jew" was, in both instances, the object of the 
verb; but it is not. When I came to learn German, I saw the 
difference at once, and the matter became clear to me. Er ist ein 
Jude. Sie liebt einen Juden. You see that "loves " is a transitive 
verb, whereas " is " is a neuter, or intransitive one. The objective 
case follows a transitive verb, never a neuter or intransitive one. 
What follows the neuter verb, therefore, or any verb naming or 
nominating anybody, is not the object, not anything in the objective- 
case; but the attribute — so called because it generally attributes 
something to somebody — and, if a noun, is always in the nomina- 
tive case. " He is a man; he is manly ; he stands a freeman; he 
remains a prince; he seems poor ; he appears wealthy ; he looks 
Tiandsome; he is called The Great Unknown; he is appointed ^McZ^'e; 
he is elected governor " — in all these cases, what follows the verb is 
an attribute or quality, and, wherever it is a noun, it is in the 
nominative case. Remember, therefore, that nouns following such 
verbs as be, become, seem, appear, stand, walk, and the passive verbs 
is called, is named, is styled, is appointed, is elected, is made, are 
always in the nominative case, and are' termed the attribute, or, by 
some grammarians, the complement, of the sentence. 

238. Verbs, of which there must be one, at least, ex- 
pressed or understood, in every sentence, must ajree in 



( 



As Melating to Verbs. 149 

person and in number with the nouns or pronouns which 
are the nominatives of the sentence; that is to say, the 
Verbs must be of the same person and same number as 
the nominatives are. Verbs frequently change their forms 
and endings to make themselves agree with the nomina- 
tives. How necessary it is, then, to know what is, and 
what is not, a nominative in a sentence ! Let us take an 
example. "John smite Peter." "What are these words? 
John is a noun, third person, singular number, nomina- 
tive case. Smite is a Verb, Jirst person, singular number. 
Peter is a noun, third person, singular number, objective 
case. Therefore, the sentence is incorrect ; for the notni- 
native, John, is in the third person, and the Verb is in 
the first ; while both ought to be in the same per so7i. 
The sentence ought to be, " John smites Peter ;" and not 
" John smite Peter." 

239. This is, to be sure, a very glaring error ; but still 
it is no more than an error, and is, in fact, as excusable 
as any other grammatical error. " The men lives in the 
country." Here the Verb lives is in the singular number, 
and the noun men, which is the nominative, is in the 
p>lural number. " The men live in the country," it ought 
to be. These errors stare us in the face. But when the 
sentences become longer, and embrace several nominatives 
and Verbs, we do not so readily perceive the errors that 
are committed. " The intention of the act of Parliament, 
and not its several penalties, decide the character of the 
corrupt assembly by whom it was passed." Here the 
noun penalties comes so near to the Verb decide that the 
ear deceives the judgment. But the noun intention is 
the nominative to the Verb, which therefore ought to be 
decides. Let us take a sentence still more deceiving. 
" Without the aid of a fraudulent paper-money, the tyrants 
never could have performed any of those deeds by which 
their safety have been endangered, and which have, at the 
same time, made them detested." Deeds is the nomina- 



150 Syntax, 

tive to the last have and its principal Verb ; but safety is 
the nominative to the first have; and therefore this first 
have ought to have been has. You see that the error 
arises from our having the plural noun deeds in our eye 
and ear. Take all the rest of the sentence away, and 
leave " safety have been " standing by itself, and then the 
error is as flagrant as '■'■John smite Peter. '''' Watch me 
now, in the next sentence. " It must be observed that 
land fell greatly in price as soon as the cheats began to 
draw in their paper-money. In such cases the quantity 
and quality of the land is the same as it was before ; but 
the price is reduced all of a sudden, by a change in the 
value and power of the money, which becomes very dif- 
ferent from what it was." Here are two complete sen- 
tences, which go very glibly off the tongue. There is 
nothing in them that offends the ear. The first is, indeed, 
correct ; but the last is a mass of error. Quantity and 
quality, which are the nominatives in the first member of 
the sentence, make, together, a plural, and should have 
been followed, after the word land, by are and not by is; 
and the it was, which followed, should, of course, have 
been they were. In the second member of the sentence, 
value and power are the nominatives of becomes, which, 
therefore, should have been becom,e ; and then, again, 
there follows an it was, instead of they were. We ai'e 
misled, in such cases, by the nearness of the singular 
noim, which comes in between the nominatives and the 
Verbs. We should not be likely to say, " Quantity and 
quality is; value and power becomes.'''' But when a sin- 
gular noun comes in between such nominatives and the 
Verbs, we are very apt to be thinking of that noun, and 
to commit error. When we once begin, we keep on; 
and if the sentence be long, we get together, at last, a 
fine collection of Verbs and pronouns, making as complete 
nonsense as heart can wish. Judge Blackstone, in the 
4th Book, Chapter 33, says, " The very scheme and model 



As Melating to Verbs. 151 

of the administration of common justice, between party 
and party, was entirely settled by this king ; and has con- 
tinued nearly the same to this day." Administration of 
common justice was full upon the judge's ear ; down he 
clapped was / and has naturally followed ; and thus, my 
dear son, in grammar as in moral conduct, one fault 
almost necessarily produces others. 

240. Look, therefore, at your nominative, before you 
put a Verb upon paper ; for, you see, it may be one word, 
or tvio or m.ore words. But observe, if there be two or 
more singular nouns or pronouns, separated by or, which, 
you know, is a disjoining conjunction; then, the Verb 
must be in the singular; as, "A soldier, or a sailor, who 
has served his country faithfully, is fauiy entitled to a 
pension ; but who will say that a prostituted peer, a pimp, 
or a buffoon, merits a similar provision from the public?" 

241. It sometimes happens that there are, in the nomi- 
native, two or more nouns, or pronouns, and that they 
are in different numbers, or in different persons ; as, '■'■The 
minister or the borough-tyrants.'''' These nouns cannot 
have the Verb to agree with them both. Therefore if it 
be the conspiring of these wretches against the liberties 
of the people, of which we have to speak, we cannot say, 
" The minister or the borough- tyrants conspire; " because 
the Verb would not then agree in number with the noun 
minister; nor can we ssij conspires y because the Verb 
would not agree with the noun borough-tyrants. There- 
fore, we must not write such sentences; we must say, 
" The minister co7ispires, or the borough-tyrants conspire, 
against the liberties of the people." Repetition is some- 
times disagreeable to the ear ; but it is better to repeat, 
be it ever so often, than to write bad grammar, which is 
only another term for nonsense. 

242. When nominatives are separated by nor, the rule 
of or must be followed. " Neither man nor beast is safe 
in such weather ; " and not are safe. And if nominatives 



152 Syntax, 

of different numbers present themselves, we must not give 
them a Verb which disagrees with either the one or the 
other. We must not say: "Neither the halter nor the 
bayonets are sufficient to prevent us from obtaining our 
rights." We must avoid this bad grammar by using a 
different form of words; as, "We are to be prevented 
from obtaining our rights by neither the halter nor the 
bayonets." And why should we wish to write bad gram- 
mar, if we can express our meaning in good grammar? 

243. If or or nor disjoin nouns and pronouns of different 
persons, these nouns and pronouns, though they be all of 
the same number, cannot be the nominative of one and 
the same Verb. We cannot say, "They or I am in fault; 
I, or they, or he, is the author of it ; George or I am the 
person." Mr. Lindley Murray says that we may use 
these phrases ; and that we have only to take care that 
the Verb agrees with that person which is placed nearest 
to it ; but he says, also, that it would be better to avoid 
such phrases by giving a different turn to our words. 
I do not like to leave anything to chance or to discretion 
when we have a clear principle for our guide. Fill up the 
sentences, and you will see what pretty work there is. 
" They am in fault, or I am in fault ; I is the author, or 
they is the author, or he is the author ; George am the 
person, or I am, the person." Mi\ Murray gives a similar 
latitud^e as to the Verbs used with a mixture of plurals 
and singulars, as mentioned in the foregoing paragraph. 
The truth, I suspect, is, that Mr. Murray, observing that 
great wiiters frequently committed these errors, thought 
it prudent to give up the cause of grammar, rather than 
seem to set himself against such formidable authority. 
But if we follow this course, it is pretty clear that we 
shall very soon be left with no principle and no rule of 
grammar. 

The grammarians declare that you may say, "Either he or I am 
the guilty one;" or, "He is the guilty one, or I am;" "You or 



As Helating to Verbs. 153 

William is to go;" or, "You are to go, or William is." The eye 
or the ear often decides which is best. "You must not tell us 
what you or anybody else thinks,^'' seems more compact than "You 
must not tell us whatyoM think, or what anybody else thinks." If 
one of the nominatives be negatively used, the verb must be in the 
singular. Thus, "He, and not I, is chosen;" "I, and not they, 
am to go." These are, indeed, correct ; and yet I think it is better 
to say, He is chosen, and not I; I am to go, and not they. I beg 
you to notice how frequently and nicely Cobbett uses the subjunc- 
tive be after if and though, which is correct, and which now, 
unfortunately, is falling out of use among common writers. 

244. The nominative is frequently a noun of multitude/ 
as, mob, parliam,ent, gang. Now, where this is the case, 
the Verb is used in the singular or in the plural, upon 
precisely the same principles that the pronouns are so 
used ; and as these principles, together with ample illus- 
trations by the way of example, have been given you in 
Letter XVII, paragraph 181, I need say nothing more of 
the matter. I will just observe, however, that consistency, 
in the use of the Verb, in such cases, is the main thing to 
keep in view. We may say, "The gang of borough- 
tyrants is cruel ; " or, " that the gang of borough-tyrants 
are cruel ; " but if we go on to speak of their notoriously 
brutal ignorance, we must not say, "The gang of borough- 
tyrants is cruel, and are also notoriously as ignorant as 
brutes." We must use is in both places, or are in both 
places. 

245. In looking for the nominative of a sentence, take 
care that the relative pronoun be not a stumbling-block, 
for relatives have no changes to denote number or person/ 
and though they may sometimes appear to be of them- 
selves nominatives, they never can be such. " The men 
who are here, the man who is here ; the cocks that crow, 
the cock that crotos." Now, if the relative be the nomi- 
native, why do the Verbs change, seeing that here is no 
change in the relative f No : the Verb, in pursuit of its 
nominative, runs through the relatives to come at their 

7* 



154 Syyitax, 

antecedents, men, man, cocks, cocJc. Bishop Lowth says, 
however, that "the relative is the nominative when no 
other nominative comes between it and the Verb ; " and 
Mr. Murray has very faithfully copied this erroneous 
observation. '■'■Who is in the house"? IVho are in the 
house? ^Vho strikes the iron? Who strike the iron? 
Who vms in the street ? Who were in the street ? " Now, 
here is, in all these instances, no other nominative between 
the relative and the Verb ; and yet the Verb is continually 
varying. Why does it vary? Because it disregards the 
relative and goes and finds the antecedent, and accommo- 
dates its number to that antecedent. The antecedents 
are, in these instances, understood : " What person is in 
the house ? What 2>erso7is are in the house ? What person 
strikes the ii'on? What jt?ersoMS strike the iron? What 
person was in the street? What 2^^'''so'^^s were in the 
street?" The Bishop seems to have had a misgiving in 
his mind, when he gave this account of the nominative 
functions of the relative ; for he adds, " the relative is of 
the same person as the antecedent ; and the Verb agrees 
xcith it accordingly." Oh! oh! but the relative is always 
the same, and is of any and of every number 'And person. 
How then can the Verb, when it makes its changes in 
number and person, be said to agree with the relative? 
Disagree, indeed, with the relative the Verb cannot any 
more than it can with a preposition ; for the relative has, 
like the preposition, no changes to denote cases; but the 
danger is that in certain instances the relative may be 
taken for a nominative, without your looking after the 
antecedent, which is the real nominative, and that thus, 
not having the number and person of the antecedent 
clearly in your mind, you may give to the Verb a vsa'ong 
number or person. It is very seldom that those who 
lay down erroneous rules furnish us with examples by 
the means of which we are enabled to detect the error of 
these rules; yet, Mr. Murray has, in the present case, 



As Melating to Verbs. 155 

done this most amply. For in another part of his book 
he has these two examples: "I am the general who give 
the orders to-day. I am the general loho gives the orders 
to-day." Here the antecedent as well as the relative are 
precisely the same ; the order of the words is the same ; 
and yet the words are different. Why? Because, in the 
first example, the pronoun I is the nominative, and in the 
second, the noun general. The first means, " I, who am 
the general here, give the orders to-day." The second 
means, "The general who gives the orders to-day is I." 
Nothing can more clearly show that the relative cannot 
be the nominative, and that to consider it as a nominative 
must lead to error and confusion. You will observe, 
therefore, that when I, in the Etymology and Syntax as 
relating to relative pronouns, speak of relatives as being 
in the nominative case, I mean that they relate to nouns 
or to personal pronouns which are in that case. The 
same observation applies to the other cases. 

I am strongly inclined to think that Cobbett is in error here. 
The relative pronoun naust have person, number, gender, and case, 
like any other pronoun ; and who is undoubtedly always of the 
same person and number as the word to which it relates. Let us 
put it directly after all the three persons, singular and plural: • 

It is I who speak, or It is I who am speaking. 

It is thou who speakest, " It is thou who art speaking. 
It is he who speaks, " It is he who is speaking. 

It is we who speak, " It is we who are speaking. 

It is you who speak, " It is you who are speaking. 

It is they who speak, " It is they who are speaking. 

Now here each who is of the same person as the pronoun or word 
to which it relates, and consequently the verb agrees with it. 
Strangely enough, the relative pronoun may, as Cobbett says, be 
of any person ; but that docs not prevent it from agreeing with its 
antecedent. I used to think that who was always of the third 
person, referring always to somebody spoken of; but now I see 
that it may be of the first person, referring to somebody who is 
speaking. Nevertheless, we do sometimes hear, It is I who speaks 
German; it is you who speaks Spanish; it is you that speaks 



156 Syntax, 

French. This may be explained by supposing that the full meaning 
of the words is : It is I who am the person that speaks German -, 
it is you who are the person that speaks Spanish. And here again 
each who is of the same person as the antecedent. 

246. We are sometimes embarrassed to fix precisely on 
the nominative, when a sort of addition is made to it by 
words expressing persons or things that accompany it ; 
as, " The Tyrant, with the Spy, have brought Peter to the 
block." We hesitate to determine whether the Tyraiit 
alone is in the nominative, or whether the nominative 
includes the Spy; and of course we hesitate which to 
employ, the singular or the plural Verb ; that is to say, 
has or have. The meaning must be our guide. If we 
mean that the act has been done by the Tyrant himself, 
and that the Spy has been a mere involuntary agent, then 
we ought to use the singular ; but if we believe that the 
Spy has been a co-operator • an associate; an accomplice; 
then we must use the plural of the Verb. " The Tyrant 
with his Proclamation has produced great oppression 
and flagrant violations of law." Mas, by all means, in 
this case ; because the proclamation is a mere instrument. 
Give the sentence a trurn: "The Tyrant has produced 
great oppression and flagrant violations of the law with 
his proclamation." This is good; but "the Tyrant has 
brought Peter to the block with the Spy," is bad; it 
sounds badly ; and it is bad sense. It does not say what 
we mean it should say. "A leg of mutton, with turnips 
and carrots, is very good." If we mean to say that a leg 
of mutton when cooked with these vegetables, is good, 
we must use is y but if we be speaking of the goodness 
of a leg of mutton and these vegetables taken together, 
we must use are. When with means along with, together 
with, in company with, and the like, it is nearly the same 
as and; and then the plural Verb must be used. ^'■Ile, 
with his bare hand, takes up hot iron." Not, "he, with 
his bare hand, take up." "He, with his brothers, are 



As Melating to Verbs. 157 

able to do mucli." Not, "2S able to do much." If the 
pronoun be used instead of brothers, it will be in the 
objective case: "He, with thein, ai-e able to do much." 
But this is no impediment to the including of the noun 
(represented by them) in the nominative. With, which 
is a preposition, takes the objective case after it; but if 
the persons or things represented by the words coming 
after the preposition form part of the actors in a sen- 
tence, the imderstood nouns make part of the nominatives. 
" The bag, with the guineas and dollars in it, were stolen." 
For if we say vms stolen, it is possible for us to mean 
that the bag only was stolen. "Sobriety, with great 
industry and talent, enable a man to perform great 
deeds." And not enables ; for sobriety alone would not 
enable a man to do great things. " The borough-tyranny, 
with the paper-money makers, have produced misery and 
starvation." And not has ^' for we mean that the two 
have co-operated. "Zeal, with disci-etion, do much;" and 
not, does much; for we mean, on the contrary, that it 
does nothing. It is the meaning that must determine 
which of the numbers we ought, in all such cases, to 
employ. 

The grammarians are now unanimous in declaring that a phrase 
beginning with the preposition with, coming directly after the 
subject, does not affect the verb, or predicate ; as, The vessel, with 
her crew, was lost ; the regiment, with its officers, was captured ; 
the house, with its contents, Jias been sold; the minister, with his 
cabinet, has resigned; the emperor, with his family, has been 
assassinated ; . Cobbett, with his Grammar, lias done much good. 
Therefore, it is correct to say, The tyrant, with the spy, has 
brought Peter to the block; he, with his brothers, has done much; 
the bag, with the guineas and dollars in it, was stolen; zeal, with 
discretion, does much. Because, in these instances, "with the 
spy" and "with his brothers" indicate, like the phrase with his 
proclamation, merely instruments ; and the sentence about the bag 
of money means simply that the bag was stolen with what it 
contained. The sentence about sobriety means that this virtue, 
employed or combined with other qualities, enables a man to 



158 Syntax, 

perform great deeds ; and that about zeal with discretion must be 
regarded in the same way. Besides, the preposition with puts the 
spy and the brothers, the guineas and the dollars, the industry and 
the talent, in the objective case; and how can any tiling in the 
objective case be the subject, which is always in the nominative case ? 
What Cobbett says about the sentence, "He, with his brothers, 
are able to do much," is about as good an example of sophistry as 
any thing I know. For an expression of this kind, see Cobbett's 
account of the sand-hill as an educator. Life, page 261. 

The same is the case with sentences in which the phrase as well as 
occurs. Clay, as well as Webster, was a great orator ; Charles, as 
well as his brother, was successful in business ; the father, as well 
as his son, is in fault; the minutest insect, as well as the largest 
quadruped, derives its life from the same Omnipotent Source. 

247. The Verb to he sometimes comes between two 
nouns of diiferent numbers. "The great evil is the 
borough- debt." In this sentence there is nothing to 
embarrass us ; because evil and horough-deht are both in 
the singular. But, " the great evil is the taxes,^^ is not so 
clear of embarrassment. The embarrassment is the same, 
when there is a singular noun on one side, and two or 
more singulars or plurals on the other side; as, "The 
curse of the country is the profligacy, the rapacity, the 
corruption of the law-makers, the base subserviency of 
the administrators of the law, and the frauds of the 
makers of paper-money." Now, we mean, here, that these 
things constitute, ox form, or make up, a curse. We mean 
that the cui"se consists of these things; and if we said 
this, there would be no puzzling. " The evil is the taxes." 
That is, the taxes constitute the evil ; but we cannot say, 
"the evil are the taxes ; " nor can we say, that the "curse 
are these things." Avoid, then, the use of the Verb to be 
in all such cases. Say, the curse of the country consists 
of, or arises from, or is produced hy. Dr. Blaik, in his 
19th Lecture, says: "A feeble, a harsh, or an obscure 
style, are always faultsP The or required the singular 
Verb is ; but faults required are. If he had put is and 
faulty, there would have been no doubt of his being 



As Melating to Yerhs. 159 

correct. But as the sentence now stands, there is great 
room for doubt, and, that, too, as to more than one point ; 
for fault means defect, and a style, which is a whole, 
cannot well be called a defect, which mean a want of good- 
ness in a part. Feebleness, harshness, obscurity, are 
faidty. But to call the style itself, to call the whole thing 
0, fault, is more than the Doctor meant. The style may 
be faulty, and yet it may not be a fault. The Doctor's 
work is faulty; but, surely, the work is not 2i fault! 

248. Lest you should be, in certain instances, puzzled 
to find your nominative case, which, as you now see, con- 
stitutes the main spring and regulator of every sentence, 
I will here point out to you some instances wherein there 
is used, apparently, neither Verb nor nominative. "7?^ 
general I dislike to drink wine." This in general is no 
more, in fact, than one word. It means generally. But 
sometimes there is a Verb comes in : "generally speaking." 
Thus: "The borough-tyrants, generally speaking, are 
great fools as well as rogues." That is to say, "when we 
speak generally;" or, "if ?"6 are speaking generally;" or, 
" when men ov people speak generally." For observe that 
there never can he a sentence without a Verb, expressed 
or understood, and that there never can he a Verb without 
a nominative case, expressed or understood. 

249. Sometimes not only two or more nouns, or pro- 
nouns, may be the nominative of a sentence, but many 
other words along with them may assist in making a 
nominative ; as, " Pitt, Rose, Steele, and their associates, 
giving to Walter a sum of the pjjblic money, as a reward 
for libelling the sons of the king, was extremely profligate 
and base." That is to say, this act of Pitt and his asso- 
ciates was extremely profligate and base. It is, when you 
come to inquire, the act which is the nominative, and all 
the other words only go to describe the origin and end of 
the act. 



160 Syntax, 

I doubt very much whether this sentence be correct. Following 
Cobbett's own instructions, let us shorten the sentence, and see 
how it will look then: "Pitt giving Walter a sum of money was 
extremely base." I think this neither looks nor sounds correct. 
It was Ms act, PitVs act, which was base; and tlierefore it should 
be, "Pitt's giving Walter a sum of money was extremely base;" 
that is to say, Pitt's acting was base; for we cannot say, Pitt act 
ing was base. We say, "Bacon's drawing up charges against 
Essex was extremely base; John Chinaman's working for low 
wages is the head and front of his offense ;" and not. Bacon draw- 
ing up, etc. — By-the-bye, such sentences as, "The great evil is 
the taxes," are perfectly correct; for the subject is "the evil," 
which is singular, and it makes little matter what the attribute 
may be, for it has nothing to do with the verb. It is precisely the 
same form of expression which we use when we say. It is we ; it 
is you ; it is they ; it is the boys ; it is the rich ; it is the wicked ; 
it is the Italians ; and so on. 

250. You must take care that there be a nominative, 
and that it be clearly expressed or understood. " The 
Attorney-General Gibbs, whose malignity induced him to 
be extremely violent, and vms listened to by the Judges." 
The first Verb induced has a nominative, namely, the 
malignity of the Attorney-General Gibbs; but the was 
has no nominative, either expressed or clearly understood ; 
and we cannot, therefore, tell what or who it was that 
was listened to ; whether the malignity of Gibbs, or Gibbs 
himself. It should have been, and who, or, and he, was 
listened to ; and then we should have known that it was 
Gibbs himself that was listened to. The omitting of the 
nominative, five hundred instances of which I could draw 
from Judge Blackstone and Doctor Johnson, arises very 
often from a desire to _avoid a repetition of the noun or 
pronouns ; but repetition is always to be preferred before 
obscurity. 

251. Now, my dear James, I hope that I have explained 
to you, sufficiently, not only ichat the 7iominative is, but 
what are its powers in every sentence, and that I have 
imprinted deeply on your mind the necessity of keeping 



As delating to Verbs. 161 

the nominative constantly in your eye. For want of doing 
this, Judge Blackstone has, in Book IV, Chap. 17, com- 
mitted some most ludicrous errors. " Our ancient Saxon 
laws nominally punished theft with deatii, if above the 
value of twelve-pence ; hut the criminal was permitted to 
redeem his life by a pecuniary ransom ; as among their 
German ancestors^ What confusion is here? "W^se 
ancestors ? Theirs. Who are they f Why the criminal. 
Theirs, if it retate to anything, must relate to laws; and 
then the laws have ancestors. Then, what is it that was 
to be of above the value of twelve-pence ? The death, or 
the theft? By, ^Hf above the value of twelve-pence," the 
Judge, without doubt, meant, "*y the thing stolen were 
above the value of twelve-pence;" but he says no such 
thing ; and the meaning of the words is, if the death were 
above the value of twelve-pence. The sentence should 
have stood thus: "Our ancient Saxon laws nominally 
punished theft with death, if the thing stolen were above 
the value of twelve-pence; but the crimiuals were per- 
mitted to redeem their lives by a pecuniary ransom ; as 
among their German ancestors." I could quote, from the 
same author, hundreds of examples of similar errors ; but 
were there only this one to be found in a work which is 
composed of matter which was read, in the way of Lec- 
tures, by a professor of law, to students in the University 
of Oxford, even this one ought to be sufficient to convince 
you of the importance of attending to the precepts which 
I have given you relative to this part of our subject. 

252. As to the objective case, it has nothing to do with 
Verbs ; because a noun which is not in the nominative 

must be in the objective ; and because Verbs do never 
vary their endings to make themselves agree with the 
objective. This case has been sufficiently explained under 
the head of personal pronouns, which have endings to 
denote it. 

253. The possessive case, likewise, has nothing to do 



162 SyntaxjA, 

with Verbs, only you must take care that you do not, in 
any instance, look upon it as a nominative. "The quality 
of the apples were good." No ; it must be was ; for qual- 
ity is the nominative and apples the possessive. "The 
want of learning, talent, and sense are more visible in 
the two houses of Parliament than in any other part of 
the nation." Take care upon all such occasions. Such 
sentences are, as to grammatical construction, very deceiv- 
ing. It should be " is more visible ;" for wa^it is the nomi- 
native ; and learning, talent, and sense are in the posses- 
sive. The want of learning, and so on. 

254. You now know all about the person and number 
of Verbs. You know the reasons upon which are founded 
their variations with regard to these two circumstances. 
Look, now, at the conjugation in Letter VTII, paragraph 
98; and you will see that there remain the Times and 
Modes to be considered. 

255. Of Times there is very little to be said here. All 
the fanciful distinctions oi perfect ^present, more past, and 
more perfect past, and numerous others, only tend to 
bewilder, confuse, and disgust the learner. There can 
be but three times, ihe pkresent, the^as^, \h.e future ; and, 
for the expressing of these, our language provides us 
with words and terminations the most suitable that can 
possil^y be conceived. Li some languages, which contain 
no little words such as our signs, will, shall, may, and so 
on, the Verbs themselves change their form in order to 
express what we express by the help of these signs. 
In French, for instance, there are tioo past times. I will 
give you an example in order to explain this matter. 
" The working men, every day, gave money to the tyi^ants, 
who, in retmn, gave the working men dungeons and 
axes." Now here is our word gave, which is the past 
time of the Verb to give. It is the same word, you see, 
in both instances; but you will see it diiferent in the 
French. "Tous les jours, les ouvriers donnaient de 



As Helating to Verbs. 163 

I'argerit aux tyi'ants, qui, en retoui", donnerent aux ouvriers 
des cachots et des baches." You see that, in one place, 
our give is translated by donnaient, and in the other 
place, by donnerent. One of thfese is called, in French, 
the past imperfect, and the other the past perfect. This 
distinction is necessary in the French; but similar dis- 
tinctions are wholly unnecessary in English. 

256. In the Latin language, the Verbs change their 
endings so as to include in the Verbs themselves what we 
express by our auxiliary Verb to have. And they have 
as many changes, or different endings, as are required to 
express all those various circumstances of time which we 
express by loork, worked, shall work, may work, might 
loork, have worked, had worked, shall have worked, m,ay 
have worked, might have worked, and so on. It is, there- 
fore, necessary for the Latins to have distinct appellations 
to suit these various circumstances of time, or states of 
an action ; but such distinction of appellations can be of 
no use to us, whose Verbs never vary then* endings to 
express time, except the single variation from the present 
to the past / for, even as to the future, the signs answer 
our purpose. In our compound times, that is to say, such 
as / have worked, there is the Verb to have, which be- 
comes had, or s?iall have, and so on. 

257. Why, then, should we perplex ourselves with a 
multitude of artificial distinctions, which cannot, by any 
possibility, be of any use in practice ? These distinctions 
have been introduced from this cause: those who have 
written English Grammars have been taught Latia ; and 
either unable to divest themselves of their Latin rules, or 
unwilling to treat with simplicity that which, if made 
somewhat of a mystery, would make them appear more 
learned than the mass of people, they have endeavored to 
make our simple language turn and twist itself so as 
to become as complex in its principles as the Latin lan- 
gviage is. 



164 Syntax, 

258. There are, however, some few remarks to be made 
with regard to the times of Verbs; but before I make 
them, I must speak of the participles. Just cast your eye 
again on Letter VIII, paragraphs 97 and 102. Look at 
the conjugations of the Verbs to loork, to have, and to he, 
in that same Letter. These participles, you see, with the 
help of to have and to be, form oiir compouyid thnes. I 
need not tell you that / was working means the same as 
I worked, only that the former supposes that something 
else was going on at the same time, or that something 
happened at the time I was working, or that, at least, 
there is some circumstance of action or of existence col- 
lateral with tny working ; as, " I was working when he 
came; I loas sick while I was working ; it rained while 
I was working ; she scolded while I was working." I need 
not tell you the use of do and did; I need not say that 
I do work is the same as I work, only the former com- 
presses the action more positively, and adds some de- 
gree of force to the assertion ; and that did work is the 
same as worked, only the former is, in the past time, of 
the same use as do is in the present. I need not dwell 
here on the uses of %oill, shall, may, might, should, would, 
can, could, and must ; which uses, various as they are, 
are as well known to us all as the uses of our teeth and 
our noses ; and to misapply which words argues not only a 
deficiency in the reasoning faculties, but also a deficiency 
in instinctive discrimination. I will not, my dear James, 
in imitation of the learned doctors, pester you with a 
philological examination into the origin and properties of 
words, with regard to the use of which, if you were to 
commit an error in conversation, your brother Richard, 
who is four years old, would instantly put you right. Of 
all these little words I have said quite enough before; 
but when the Verbs to have and to he are used as auxili- 
aries to principal Verbs, and, especially, when the sen- 
tences are long, errors of great consequence may be com- 



As Helating to Verbs. 165 

mitted ; and, therefore, against these it will be proper to 
guard you. 

And yet, here in the United States, there is no more common 
error than the confounding of shall and will. If you can stick the 
following rule fast in your mind, it will save you from making 
many mistakes in the \ase of these words : — I shall, you will, he will, 
are the forms of tlie future, and merely foretell what will take 
place ; / loill, you shall, he shall, arc the forms of the potential, 
and express will or determination on the part of the speaker. 
The latter are equal to the German ich will, du sollst, er soil. 
I^ow try to repeat this rule without looking at the book. Turn it 
over in your mind, and try it in sentences of your own formation. 
Look at the last three paragraphs of Cobbett's Farewell Address to 
his Countrymen, page 159. 

An English nobleman, Sir E. W. Head, has written a whole book 
on these two mighty little words, " Shall and Will," from which the 
following "admirable statement of the true distinction between 
these auxiliaries "* is taken : 

' ' Will in the first person expresses a resolution or a promise : ' I 
will not go '' — itis my resolution not to go. ' I. will give it you ' = 
I promise to give it you. Will in the second Tpar&on foretells : 'If 
you come at six o'clock, you will find me at home.' Will in the 
second person, in questions, anticipates a wish or an intention: 
Will you go to-morrow?' = Is it your wish or intention to go 
to-morrow T Will in the third person foretells, generally implying 
an intention at the same time, when the nominative is a rational 
creature ; ' He will come to-morrow,' signifies what is to take place, 
and that it is the intention of the person mentioned to come. * I 
think it will snow to-day,' intimates what is, probably, to take 
place. Will must never be used in questions with nominative cases 
of the first person : ' Will we come to-morrow ?' = Is it our inten- 
tion or desire to come to-morroio ? which is an absurd question. We 
must say. Shall we come to-morrow? 

" Would is subject to the same rules as will. Would followed by 
that is frequently used (the nominative being expressed or under- 
stood) to express a wish : ' Would that he had died before this dis- 
grace befell him!' = I wish that he had died before this disgrace befell 
Mm. Would have, followed by an infinitive, signifies a desire to do 
or to make ; ' I would have you think of these things ' = / wish to 
make you think of these things. Would is often used to express a 



♦A. S. Hill's Rhetoric, in which I found the above rule and this quotation. 



166 Syntax, 

custom: 'He would often talk about these things' = ^ It was his 
custom to talk of these things. 

'^ Shall in the first person foretells, simply expressing wAai is to 
take place : ' I shall go to-morrow. ' Notice that no intention or 
desire is expressed by sliall. Shall, in the first person, in questions, 
asks permission : ' Shall 1 read ?' = Do you wish me, or loill you per- 
mit me to read? Shall in the second and third persons expresses 
a promise, a command, or a threat : ' You shall have these books 
to-morrow' = / promise to let you have these books to-morrow. 
' Thou shalt not steal ' — / command thee not to steal. ' He shall 
be punished for this ' = I threaten to punish him, for this offense. 

''Should is subject to the same rules as shall. Should frequently r 
expresses duty: ' You should not do so ' = It is your duty not to do 
so. Should often signifies a plan : ' I should not do so ' = It would 
not he my plan to do so. Should often expresses supposition: 
' Should they not agree to the proposals, what must I do ?' = Sup- 
pose that it happen that they loill not agree to tlie proposals.'''' 

If you wish any more on this Head, read any play of Shake- 
speare's, and take down every sentence with will or shall, would or 
should, and learn them by heart. Mr. White, speaking of this very 
matter, says admirably, "The best way is, to give yourself no 
trouble at all about your grammar. Read the best authors, con- 
verse with the best speakers, and know what you mean to say, 
and you will speak and write good English, and may let grammar 
go to its 01071 place!'''' Jacob said to the angel, '* I will not let thee 
go till thou hast blessed me." You would say to your servant, "1 
shall let you go if you do your duty." Consider the difference in 
meaning between these two. 

259. Time is so plain a matter ; it must be so well 
known to us, whether it be the present, the j!?as^, or the 
future, that we mean to express, that we shall hai'dly 
say, " We work,''^ when we are speaking of our having 
viorked last year. But you have seen in Letter XVI, 
paragraph 171 (look at it again), that Doctor Blair could 
make a mistake in describing the time of an action. 
Doctor Blair makes use of "it had been better omitted." 
Meaning that it woidd have been better to omit it. This 
is a sheer vulgarism, like, "I had as lief be killed as 
enslaved." Which ought to be, "I toow^c? as lief." But 
the most common error is the using of the Yerb to have 



As Melating to Verbs. 167 

vith the passive paxticiple, when the past time, simply, 

■r the infinitive of the Verb ought to be used. " Mr. 

ipeaker, I expected from the former language and posi- 

ive promises of the Noble Lord and the Right Honorable 

he Chancellor of the Exchequer, to have seen the Bank 

jaying in gold and silver." This is House-of- Commons 

language. Avoid it as you would avoid all the rest of 

their doings. I expected to see, to be sui'e, and not have 

seen, because the have seen carries your act of seeing 

lack beyond the period within which it is supposed to 

have been expected to take place. "T expected to have 

ploughed my land last Monday P That is to say, " I last 

Monday was in the act of expecting to have ploughed 

my land before that day."" But this is not what the 

writer means. He means to say that, last Monday, or 

before that day, he was in the act of expecting to plough 

his land on that day. " I called on him and loished to 

have submitted my manuscript to him." Five hundi'ed 

such errors are to be found in Dr. Goldsmith's works. 

"I wished, then and there, to subm,it my manuscript to 

him." I wished to do something there, and did not then 

wish that I had done something before. 

260. When you use the active participle, take care that 
the times be attended to, and that you do not, by misap- 
plication, make confusion and nonsense. " I had not the 
pleasure of hearing his sentiments when I wrote that 
letter." It should be of having heard ; because the hear- 
ing must be supposed to have been wanted previous to 
the act of wiiting. This word wanted, and the word 
icanting, are frequently misused. "All that was wanting 
was honesty." It should be wanted. "The Bank is 
weighed in the balance, and found wanting," and not 
xcanted. Found to be wanting, or in want; in want of 
money to pay its notes. 

261. I will not fatigue your memory with more examples 
relating to the times of Yerbs. Consider well what you 



168 Syntax, 

mean; what you toish to say. Examine well into the 
true meaning of your words, and you will never make a 
mistake as to the times. "7" thought to have heard the 
Noble Lord produce something like proof." No! my 
dear James will never fall into the use of such senseless 
gabble! You would think of hearing something; you 
would exjDect to hear, not to have heard. You would be 
waiting to hear, and not, like these men, be xcaiting to 
have heard. "/ should have liked to have been informed 
of the amount of the Exchequer Bills." A phraseology 
like this can be becoming only in those Houses where it 
was proposed to relieve the distresses of the nation by 
setting the laborers to dig holes one day and fill them 
up the next. 

262. It is erroneous to confound the past time with the 
passive participle of the Verb. But now, before I speak 
of this very common error, let us see a little more about 
the participles. You have seen, in Letter VIII, what the 
participles are ; you have seen that working is the active 
participle, and xoorked the passive participle. "VVe shall 
speak fully of the active by-and-by. The passive parti- 
ciple and the Verb to he, or some part of that Verb, make 
what is called the passive Verb. This is not a Verb which, 
in its origin, differs from an active Verb, in like manner 
as a neuter Verb differs from an active Verb. To sleep is 
neuter in its origin, and must, in all its parts, be neuter ; 
but every active Verb may become a passive Verb. The 
passive Verb is, in fact, that state of an active Verb which 
expresses, as we have seen above, the action as being 
received or endured ; and it is called passive because the 
receiver or endurer of the action is passive; that is to say, 
does nothing. "John smites; John is smitten.'''' Thus, 
then, the passive Verb is no other than the passive parti- 
ciple used along with some part of the Verb to he. 

263. Now, then, let us see a specimen of the errors of 
which I spoke at the beginning of the last paragraph. 



As JRelating to Verbs. 169 

When the Verb is regular, there can be no error of this 
sort ; because the past time and the passive participle are 
wiitteu in the same manner; as, "John worked ; John is 
worked^ But, when the Verb is irregular, and when the 
past time and the passive participle are written in a 
manner different from each other, there is room for error, 
and error is often committed: "John smote; John is 
smotey This is gross. It offends the ear ; but when a 
company, consisting of men who have been enabled, by 
the favor of the late William Pitt, to plunder and insult 
the people, meet under the name of a Pitt Club, to cele- 
brate the bu'thday of that corrupt and cruel minister, 
those who publish accounts of their festivities always tell 
us, that such and such toasts toere drank; instead of 
drunk. I drank at my dinner to-day ; but the milk and 
water wliich I drank, toere drunk by me. In the lists of 
Irregular Verbs, in Letter VIII, the differences between 
the past times and the passive participles are all clearly 
shown. You often hear people say, and see them write, 
"We have spoke; it was spoke in my hearing;" but "we 
have came; it was did,'''' are just as correct. 

It may be well to notice that most of these verbs, like the German 
verbs from which they are derived, change the i to a in the past 
tense, and to u in the past participle. Say, therefore, I sing, sang, 
have snug; I spring, sprang, have sprung; I ring, rang, have 
rung; I swim, swam, have swum; I sink, sank, have sunk; and 
so on. But there are a few exceptions; as, to fling, to cling, to 
wring, to sting, which change the i to u in both the past tense and 
the past participle. 

264. Done is the passive participle of to do, and it is 
very often misused. This done is frequently a very great 
offender against grammar. To do is the act of doing. 
We often see people write, "I did not speak, yesterday, 
so well as I wished to liave done.'''' Now, what is meant 
by the writer? He means to say that he did not speak 
so well as he then wished, or was wishing, . to speak. 
8 



170 Syntax, 

Therefore, the sentence should be, "I did not speak yes- 
terday so well as I wished to do.'"' That is to say, "so 
well as I wished to do it;" that is to say, to do, or to 
perform,' the act of speaking. 

265. Take great care not to be too free in your use of 
the Verb to do in any of its times or modes. It is a nice 
little handy word, and, like our oppressed it, it- is made 
use of very often when the writer is at a loss for what to 
put down. To do is to act, and, therefore, it never can, 
in any of its parts, supply the place of a neuter Verb. 
Yet, to employ it for this purpose is very common. Dr. 
Blair, in his 23rd Lecture, says : " It is somewhat unfor- 
tunate that this Number of the Spectator did not end, as 
it might very well have done, with the former beautiful 
period." That is to say, "done ^7." And, then, we ask: 
done what ? Not the act of ending y because, in this 
case, there is no action at all. The Verb means to come 
to an end; to cease; not to go any further. This same 
Verb to end, is, sometimes, an active Verb: "I end my 
sentence ; " and then the Verb to do may supply its place ; 
as, "I have not ended my sentence so well as I might 
have done; " that is, done it; that is, done, or performed, 
the act of ending. But the Number of the Spectator was 
no actor; it was expected to perform nothing ; it was, by 
the Doctor, wished to have ceased to proceed. " Did not 
end as it very well might have ended. . . ." This would 
have been correct ; but the Doctor wished to avoid the 
repetition, and thus he fell into bad grammar. "Mr. 
Speaker, I do not feel so well satisfied as I should have 
done, if the Right Honorable gentleman had explained 
the matter more fiilly." You constantly hear talk like 
this amongst those whom the boroughs make law-givers- 
To feel satisfied is, when the satisfaction is to arise from 
conviction produced by fact or reasoning, a senseless ex- 
pression ; and to supply its place, when it is, as in this 
case, a neuter Verb, by to do, is as senseless. Done whatf 



As Relating to Verbs. 171 

Done the act of feeling ! " I do not feel so well satisfied 
as I should have done^ or executed, or performed the act 
of feeling I"' What incomprehensible words! Very be- 
coming in the creatures of corruption, but ridiculous in 
any other persons in the world. 

266. But do not misunderstand me. Do not confotmd 
do and did, as parts of a principal Verb, with the same 
words, as parts of an auxiliary. Read again Letter VIII, 
paragraph 111. Do and did, as helpers, are used with 
neuter as well as with active Verbs; for here it is not 
their business to supply the place of other Verbs, but 
merely to add strength to affirmations and negations, or 
to mark time; as, "The sentence does end; I do feel easy." 
But done, which is the passive participle of the active 
Verb to do, can never be used as an auxiliary. The want 
of making this distinction has led to the very common 
error of which I spoke in the last paragraph, and against 
which I am very desirous to guard you. 

267. In sentences which are negative or interrogative, 
do and did express time ; as, "Tou do not sleep ; did 
you noifeelT'' But they do not here supply the place of 
other Verbs; they merely help; and their assistance is 
useful only as to the circumstance of time ; for we may 
say, " You sleep not ; felt you not V And if in answer to 
this question, I say, " I did^'' the word/eeZ is vmderstood; 
''IdidfeeV 

You will sometimes hear even Wall-street millionaires say, " I 
done it ; he seen him ; he is dead broke ;" which is confounding the 
past participle and the past tense. You must say, I did it, I saw 
him ; he is dead broken; or, rather, completely ruined. But here 
is a very important matter; something which Cobbett does 
not touch; something of prime importance. What is the differ- 
ence between " 1 did it" and " I have done it?" between " I was 
in New York" and "I have been in NewY'ork?" between "I 
wrote the letter" and " I have written the letter?" When do you 
use the one and when the other? Think for a moment. Give 
your own explanation before reading, mine. These two forms are 



172 Syyitax, 

termed the past tense and the present perfect tense. Those who 
are '•native and to the manner born" seldom confound these 
tenses, but foreigners constantly do. The distinction between 
them, however, is exceedingly plain. We use the past tense when 
speaking of anything that has happened in a completely past time ; 
as, I did it yesterday ; 1 was in New York last week ; I wrote a 
letter last Thursday. We use the present perfect tense when 
speaking of anjiJiing that has happened in a time not yet entirely 
past, or in an indefinite past time: I have done it to-day; I have 
been in New York this week; I have written many letters ; I have 
been in Paris. Both the Germans and the French can, in their 
languages, use either form for the same time ; so that they can 
say, which we cannot, ''I have been in Kew York yesterday: I 
have written a letter last week." 

The past perfect, Ihaddone^ I had written, I Tiad been, is used 
when speaking of something happening at a time farther back 
than or anterior to a given past time. For instance : While I am. 
telling you of what happened to me in 1868 in London, and of my 
doing something there at that time, and of my writing a letter to 
somebody in that year, I suddenly inform you, for the better 
understanding of my narrative, that I had been in London before 
that year; that I had done something there before that time, and 
that I Tiad written to somebody before writing at that time. This, 
you see, is past perfect time ; it is going behind the past time of 
our narrative ; and it is caUed the perfectly past time. 

268. "Well, then, I think, that as far as relates to the 
active Yerb, the passive Yerb, and the j)assive jDarticiple, 
enough has now been said. Tou have seen, too, some- 
thing of the difference between the functions of the active 
Yerb and those of the neuter; but there are a few remarks 
to be made with regard to the latter. A neuter Yerb 
cannot have a noun or a pronoun ia the objective case 
immediately after it; for though we say, "I dream a 
dream,'^ it is understood that my mind has been engaged 
in a dream. " I live a good Ufe^"' means that I am hving 
in a good manner. " I icalk my horse about,"' means that 
I lead or conduct my horse in the pace called a ^ccdk. 
Nor can a neuter Yerb become j^^ssive; because a passive 
Verb is no other than a Yerb describing an action received 



As ^Relating to Verbs. 173 

or endured. "The noble earl, on returning to town, 
found that the noble countess toas eloped with his grace." 
I read this very sentence in an English newspaper not 
long ago. It should be had eloped; for was eloped means 
that somebody had eloped the countess; it means that she 
had received or endured, from some actor, the act of elop- 
ing, whereas? she is the actress, and the act is confined to 
herself. The Verb is called neuter because the action 
does not pass over to anything. There are Verbs which 
are inactive; such as, to sit, to sleep, to exist. These are 
also neuter Verbs, of coiu'se. But inactivity is not neces- 
sary to the making of a Verb neuter. It is sufficient for 
this purpose that the action do not pass from the actor to 
any object. 

These inactive verbs are the real neuter ones ; for, in the use of 
them, the nominative is neither acting nor acted on. But we now 
set down the whole batch, neuter and intransitive, as intransitive 
verbs; and Cobbett simply shows, by this verb to elope, that we 
cannot use an intransitive verb in the passive voice ; we can no 
more say I am eloped than we can say I am sitted, I am slept, or I 
am existed. There are a few intransitive verbs that seem an excep- 
tion to this rule ; but they are not. I mean the verbs to come, to 
arrive, to go, to return, to fall, to rise, and some others. Let me 
set them down in the two ways in which they are used: 

He has come, He is come. 

He has arrived. He is arrived. 

He has gone. He is gone. 

He has returned. He is returned. 

He has fallen. He is fallen. 

He has risen. He is risen. 

In the second form. He is come, etc. , the words come, arrived, gone, 
returned, fallen, risen, are not really participles, but adjectives, 
indicating state; so this form is not at all a passive form of the 
verb; it is simply neuter; for the subject is neither acting nor 
acted on. In the first form. He has come, etc., these words are 
participles, and the sentences indicate action completed. But I 
find I am anticipating ; Cobbett saj^s the same thing in the next 
paragraph but one. Just keep in mind that what he calls neuter 



174: Syntax, 

we now call intransitvoe; and that what he calls active, we now 
call transitive. 

269. In the instance just mentioned, tlie error is fla- 
grant: "was eloped,^'' is what few persons would put 
down in writing ; yet anybody might do it upon the au- 
thority of Dr. Johnson; for he says in his Dictionary 
that to elope is an active Verb, though he says that it is 
synonymous with to run aumy, which, in the same Dic- 
tionary, he says, is a neuter Verb. However, let those 
who prefer Doctor Johnson's authority to the dictates 
of reason and common sense say that " his grace eloped 
the countess; and that, accordingly, the countess was 
eloped.''^ 

270. The danger of error, in cases of this kind, arises 
from the circumstance of there being many Verbs which 
are active in one sense and neuter in another. The Verb 
to endure, for instance, when it means to support, to sus- 
tain, is active; as, "I endure pain.'''' But when it means 
to last, to continxhe, it is neuter ; as, " The earth endures 
from age to age." In the first sense we can say, the pain 
is endxcred; but, in the last, we cannot say the earth is 
endured from age to age. We say, indeed, I am fallen; 
the colt is grown, the trees are rotten, the stone is crum- 
bled, the post is moiddered, the pitcher is cracked; though 
to grow, to rot, to crumble, to moulder, to crack, are all 
of them neuter Verbs. But it is clearly understood here 
that we mean that the colt is in a grown, or augmented 
state; that the trees are i?i a rotten state; and so on; 
and it is equally clear that we could not mean that the 
countess was in an eloped state. " The noble earl found 
that the countess toas gone.'" This is correct, though 
to go is a neuter Verb. But gone, in this sense, is not 
the participle of the Verb to go; it is merely an adjective, 
meaning absent. If we put any word after it, which gives 
it a verbal signification, it becomes erroneous. " He found 
that the countess vkis gone out of the house.''' That is to 



As Relating to Verbs. 175 

say, was absent out of the house; and this is nonsense. 
It must, in this ease be, "He found that the countess 
had gone out of the housed 

271. Much more might be said upon this part of my 
subject; many niceties might be stated and discussed; 
but I have said quite enough on it to answer every useful 
pm'pose. Here, as everywhere else, take time to think. 
There is a reason for the right use of every word. Have 
your meaning clear in yovu' mind ; know the meaning of 
all the words you employ ; and then you will seldom com- 
mit errors. 

272. There remains to be noticed the use of the active 
^participle, and then we shall have a few, and only a few, 
words to say upon the subject of the modes of Verbs. 
As to the active participle, paragraph 97, in Letter VIII, 
will have told you nearly all that is necessary. We know 
well that I am working means that I work, and so on. 
There is great nicety in distinguishing the circumstances 
which call for the use of the one from those which call 
for the other : but, like many other things, though very 
difficult to explain by words, these circumstances are per- 
fectly well understood, and scrupulously attended to, by 
even the most illiterate persons. The active participle is, 
you know, sometimes a noun in its functions ; as, " Work- 
ing is good for oui- health." Here it is the nominative 
case to the Verb is. Sometimes it is an adjective; as, 
"the working people." As a noun it may be in any of 
the three cases ; as, " Working is good ; the advantage of 
working; I like working.^'' It may be in the singular or 
in the plural : " The working of the mines ; the workings 
of corruption." Of course it requires articles and prepo- 
sitions as nouns require them. More need not be said 
about it ; and, indeed, my chief purpose in mentioning the 
active participle in this place is to remind you that it may 
be a nominative case in a sentence. 

273. The modes have been explained in Letter VIII, 



176 Syntax, 

paragraphs 92, 93, 94, 95, and 96. Eead tliose paragraphs 
again. The infinitive mode has, in almost all respects, 
the power of a noun. '■'■To v)ork is good for our health." 
Here it is the nominative of the sentence. " To eat, to 
drink, and to sleep, are necessary." It cannot become a 
plural ; but it may be, and frequently is, in the objective 
case; as, '■'■I want to eat." The to is, in some few cases, 
omitted when the infinitive is in the objective case ; as, 
^'•I dare writey But, "I dare to write," is just as neat, 
and more proper. The to is omitted by the use of the 
ellipsis; as, "I like to shoot, hunt, and course." But 
care must be taken not to leave out the to, if you thereby 
make the nieaniyig doubtful. Eepetition is sometimes 
disagreeable, and tends to enfeeble language; but it is 
always preferable to obscurity. 

Here is a little difficulty. Cobbett has repeatedly said that the 
nominative always follows the verb to he; and so it does ; but it is 
not always so with the infinitive of this verb. Look at these two 

sentences: 

I supposed it to be him. 

I am supposed to be he. 
In the first instance, the grammarians say that we must say to he 
Mm, because it follows a word in the objective case (it), and is the 
complement of that word; and in the second case we must say 
to he he, because It follows a word in the nominative case (I), and 
is the complement of that word. Observe that in the second 
example it is as If I said, " I am supposed to be existing ;'''' and in 
the first, as if 1 said, " 1 supposed something.^'' 

274. If you cast your eye once more on the conjugation 
of the Verb to work, in Letter VIII, you will see that I 
have there set down the three other modes with all then- 
persons, numbers, and times. The imperative mode I 
despatched very quietly by a single short paragraph ; and, 
indeed, in treating of the other two modes, the indicative 
and the subjunctive, there is nothing to do but to point; 
out the trifling variations that our Verbs undergo in order 
to make them suit their forms to the differences of mode. 



As Relating to Verbs. Ill 

The indicative mode is that manner of using the Verb 
which is appHed when we are speaking of an action with- 
out any other action being at all connected with it, so as 
to make the one a condition or corisequence of the other. 
" He works every day ; he rides out ; " and so on. But, 
there may be a condition or a consequence dependent on 
this working and riding; and in that case these Verbs 
must be in the subjunctive mode ; because the action they 
express deperids on something else, going before or coming 
after. "If he loork every day, he shall hejiaid every day; 
if he ride out, he will not be at home by supper time." 
The s is dropped at the end of the Verbs here; and the 
true cause is this, that there is a sign understood. If 
filled up, the sentence would stand thus : " If he should 
loork; if he should ride out." So that, after all, the Verb 
has, in reality, no change of termination to denote lohat is 
called mode. And all the fuss which grammarians have 
made about the potential modes, and other fanciful dis- 
tinctions of the kind, only serve to puzzle and perplex the 
learner. 

275. Verbs in general, and, indeed, all the Verbs, except 
the Verb to be, have always the same form in the present 
time of the indicative and in that of the subjunctive, in 
all the persons, save the second and third person singular. 
Thus, we say, in the present of the indicative, I work, 
we woi'k, you work, they work; and in the subjunctive the 
same. But we say, in the former, thou workest, he works; 
while, in the subjunctive, we say, thou work, he loork; 
that is to say, thou inayst work, or mightst, or shouldst 
(and so on), work ; and he may work, or might or should, 
as the sense may require. Therefore, as to all Verbs, 
except the Verb to be, it is only ifi these two persons that 
any thing can happen to render any distinction of mode 
necessary. But the Verb to be has more variation than 
any other Verb. All other Verbs have the same form in 
their indicative present time as in their infinitive m,ode, 
8* 



178 Syntax, 

with the trifling exception of the st and s added to the 
second and third person singular ; as, to have, to write, to 
work, to run; I have, I write, I work, I run. But the 
Verb to be becomes, in the present time of its indicative, 
I am, thou art, he is, we are, you are, they are; which 
are great changes. Therefore, as the subjunctive, in all 
its persons, takes the infinitive of the Verb without any 
change at all, the Verb to be exhibits the use of this mode 
most clearly ; for, instead of I ain, thou art, he is, we are, 
the subjunctive requires, I be, thou be, he be, we be; that 
is to say, I may be, or might be ; and so on. Look now 
at the conjugation of the Verb to be, in Letter VIII, 
paragraph 117 ; and then come back to me. 

276. You see, then, that this important Verb, to be, has 
a form in some of its persons appropriated to the sub- 
junctive mode. This is a matter of consequence. Dis- 
tinctions, without differences in the things distinguished, 
are fanciful, and, at best, useless. Here is a real difference ; 
a practical difference ; a difference in the form of the word. 
Here is a past time of the subjunctive ; a past time distin- 
guished, in some of its persons, by a different manner of 
spelling or writing the word. If I be; if I were; if he 
were; and not if I was, if he was. In the case of other 
Verbs, the past of the indicative is the same as the past of 
the subjunctive ; that is to say, the Verb is written in the 
same letters ; but in the case of the Verb to be it is other- 
wise. If I worked, if I sm^ote, if I had. Here the Verbs 
are the same as in I worked, I stnote, I had; but in the 
case of the Verb to be, we must say, in- the past of the 
indicative, I was, and in that of the subjunctive, if I were. 

277. The question, then, is this : What are the cases in 
which we ought to use the subjunctive form? Bishop 
Lowth, and, on liis authority, Mr. Lindley Murray, have 
said, that some conjunctions have a government of verbs; 
that is to say, make them or force them to be in the sub- 
jimctive mode. And then these gentlemen mention par- 



As Melating to Verbs. 179 

ticularly the conjunctions, if, though, unless, and some 
others. But (and these gentlemen allow it), the Verbs 
which follow these conjunctions are not always in the 
subjunctive mode; and the using of that mode must 
depend, not upon the conjunction, but upon the sense of 
the whole sentence. How, then, can the conjunction 
govern the Verb? It is the sense, the meaning of the 
whole sentence, which must govern •, and of this you will 
presently see clear proof. "7/" it be dark, do not come 
home. If eating is necessary to man, he ought not to be 
a glutton." In the first of these sentences, the matter 
expressed by the Verb may be or may not be. There 
exists an uncertainty on the subject. And if the sentence 
were filled up, it would stand thus : " If it should be dark, 
do not come home." But m the second sentence there 
exists no such uncertainty. We know, and all the world 
knows, that eating is necessary to man. We jould not 
fiU up the sentence with should; and, therefore, we make 
use of is. Thus, then, the conjunction if, which you see 
is employed in both cases, has nothing at all to do with 
the government of the verb. It is the sense which 
governs. 

It is worth while, however, to notice the conjunctions that are 
said to govern the subjunctive : though, although, unless, lest, until, 
till, whether, provided that, on condition that, — because, when used, 
they generally indicate some uncertainty. When they do not do 
this, then the indicative must be used. Here is an example that 
will illustrate this. If I were speaking of the possibilities in the 
future career of a young man, I .should naturally say. "Unless 
he be honest, he will never, though he be rich as Crcesus, be happy." 
But if I were speaking of a real person, who is actually rich as 
Crcesus, I should naturally say, ' ' Though he is rich as Croesus, he is 
not happy." Again : "Do not admit him, unless he has a ticket." 
Here we say has, because we anticipate something as fact. But, 
where there is a doubt, we use the subjunctive. "Do not give him 
the money, unless he return you the goods." "When, therefore, 
anything is spoken of as actual fact, or as in absolute existence, the 
indicative is used. Those who have studied French will remember 



180 Syntax, 

that the French have also a number of words that govern the sub- 
junctive, and in many, if not most, of the cases where they use the 
subjunctive, we do so too. Though he be a giant ; unless he be 
attentive ; lest he hurt you ; provided that he pay you ; on condi- 
tion that he reward you ; wait until he come. The French use the 
subjunctive in all these cases. They also use it after certain verbs, 
as we do too; as, ''Be sure that he lay no hand on you; mind 
that he do not touch you." You have doubtless noticed this use of 
the subjunctive in such sentences as that of Cobbett himself in 
paragraph 250 : ' ' You must take care that there be a nominative, 
and that it be clearly expressed or understood." Some writers 
think that the subjunctive mode is fast passing out of use, and 
that it will soon be altogether obsolete. I can only say that if it 
do go out of use, we shall lose the means of indicating diiierent 
shades of meaning in the words we use. I suppose one reason 
why it is going out of use is because the great army of newspaper- 
writers know nothing of it ; they are obliged to write with such 
extraordinary rapidity and in such haste that they can't take time 
to consider fine shades or differences of meaning in the words they 
employ. — Notice that the difference between the indicative and the 
subjunctive, in all verbs except the verb to be, is simply this, that 
in the subjunctive the endings aee all out off. Cast your eye 
over the conjugations of to work and to be worked. 

278. There is a great necessity for care as to this 
matter; for the meaning of what we write is very much 
affected when we make use of the modes indiscriminately. 
Let us take an instance. " Though her chastity be right 
and becoming, it gives her no claim to praise ; because she 
would be criminal if she loere not chaste." Now, by em- 
ploying the subjunctive, in the first member of the sen- 
tence, we leave it uncertain whether it be right or 7iot for 
her to be chaste ; and by eiliploying it in the second, we 
express a doubt as to the fact of her chastity. We mean 
neither of these ; and, therefore, notwithstanding here are 
a though and an if, both the Verbs ought to be in the 
indicative. " Though her chastity is right and becoming, 
it gives her no claim to praise; because she would be 
criminal if she was not chaste." Fill up with the signs. 
" Though her chastity maj be right ; if she should not be 



As Itelating to Verbs. 181 

chaste ; " and then you see, at once, what a diJBference there 
is in the meaning. 

279. The subjunctive is necessarily always used where 
a sign is left out; as, " Take care that he come to-morrow, 
that you be ready to receive him, that he be well received, 
and that all things be duly prepared for his entertain- 
ment." Fill up with the sig?is, and you wUl see the reason 
for what you write. 

280. The Verb to be is sometimes used thus : " Were he 
rich, I should not like him the better. Were it not dark, 
I would go." That is to say, if he xoere; if it xoere. '''■It 
loere a jest, indeed, to consider a set of seat-sellers and 
seat-buyers as a lawful legislative body. It were to violate 
every principle of morality to consider honesty as a virtue, 
when not to be honest is a crime which the law punishes." 
The it stands for a great deal here, "Ridiculous, indeed, 
would the state of our minds be, if it v:iere such as to 
exhibit a set of seat-sellers and seat-buyers as a lawful 
legislative body." I mention these instances because they 
appear unaccountable; and I never like to slur things 
over. Those expressions for the using of which we cannot 
give a reason ought not to be used at all. 

There is another use of the verb to be, unnoticed by Cofibett, 
which may be spoken of here. It has long been a matter of con- 
troversy whether we should say, "the bridge is building," or "the 
bridge is being built;" "preparations are making," or "prepara- 
tions are being made." Mr. White maintains that the former is 
the only proper form, and that the latter form is contrary to the 
genius of our language. And other critics are of the same opinion. 
Well, there is no use in talking of it now; it is too late to alter it; 
for this manner of speaking is now used by almost everybody that 
speaks or writes English, Every newspaper in the United States 
uses this form; and the truth is, it has become a necessity, for 
there are some cases in which no other form can be used without 
changing the meaning of the sentence. We can say, The house is 
building, the book is printing, the play is acting, the bread is 
baking, the clothes are making, and so on, m many other instances; 
but we cannot say, "The boy is whipping" or "The girl la 



182 Syntax, 

mining" to signify that "The boy is being whipped" or "The 
girl is being ruined." No; it is no use trying to change this now; 
there are certain cases where we must use "is being;" it is in the 
very life-blood of the language ; it is every-day English ; and there 
is no taking it out. It is like the word execute, which originally 
meant, and still properly means, to put a sentence into force ; but 
now it is used every day, in print and in conversation, to signify 
putting a person to death. And there is no doubt but it will con- 
tinue to be so used to the end of time ; for no dictum of the critics 
can change it. 

It is worth while remarking, that in sentences like "The house 
is building," "the corn is thrashing," the words building and 
thrashing are not verbs, but nouns ; for the original form was ' ' in 
building, " ' ' in thrashing. " The Germans have an entirely different 
verb for such expressions; for "The house is building" they say 
Das Haus wird gebaut, and not Das Haus ist gebaut, which latter 
means The house is built. 

281. As to instances in which authors have violated the 
principles of grammar, with respect to the use of the 
modes, I could easily fill a book much larger than this 
with instances of this kind from Judge Blagkstone and 
Doctor Johnson. One only shall suffice. I take it from 
the Judge's first Book. " Therefore, if the king purchases 
lands of the nature of gavel-kind, where all the sons inherit 
equaUy; yet, upon the king's demise, his eldest son shall 
succeed to these lands alone^ Here is fine confusion, 
not to say something inclining towards high-treason ; for, 
if the king's son be to inherit these lands alone, he, of 
course, is not to inherit the crown. But it is the Verb 
purchases with which we have to do at present. Now, it 
is notorious that the king does not purchase lands in 
gavel-kind, or any other lands ; whereas, from the form of 
the Verb, it is taken for granted that he does it. It should 
have been, "If the king purchase lands;" that is to say, 
if he were to purchase, or if he should purchase. 

282. Thus, my dear James, have I gone through all 
that appeared to me of importance relating to Verbs. 
Every part of the Letter ought to be carefully read, and 



As JRelating to Verbs. 183 

its meaning ought to be well weighed in your mind ; but 
always recollect that, in the using of Verbs, that which 
reqviii'es your first and most earnest care is the ascertain- 
ing of the nominative of the sentence ; for, out of every 
hundi'ed grammatical errors, full fifty, I believe, are com- 
mitted for want of due attention to this matter. 

Let me say a word here which will make clear to you what the 
Germans mean by what they call genetic teaching ; that is, unfold- 
ing a subject in such a way as to show how it originates and grows 
up to completion. The shortest possible sentence must have a sub- 
ject and a predicate (nominative and verb); for although the one 
word, "Love!" is a sentence, the subject is understood: "Love 
thou!" Thenext step is the object: "Love thou me!" Asentence 
may, therefore, consist of merely subject and predicate, or of sub- 
ject, predicate, and object. 

The last is an imperative sentence ; let us take a declarative one. 
"Men love." This is a sentence ; it contains subject and predicate, 
and makes complete sense. "Men love women." This has sub- 
ject, predicate, and object. Now we may go on adding words, 
phrases, and clauses, modifying each of these chief parts of the 
sentence, until we stretch it out into a compound or complex sen- 
tence. For a sentence, like a house, is just built up by successive 
additions. These additions are often called adjuncts ; they consist 
of single words, of phrases and clauses. I shall add all I can to the 
separate words of this sentence; first modifying the subject by 
various single words, then by a phrase, then by a clause ; and then 
I shall endeavor to do the same to the predicate and the object. 
Now observe, and you will see how a sentence grows : 

Men love women. 

The men love women. 

The wol'thy men love women. 

The very worthy men love women. 

The very worthy menTln this cityUove Women. 

The very worthy men; in this city, who are noted for their excellent char- 
acter, love women. 

Here we have modified the subject, first by the definite article, 
then by an adjective, then we have modified the adjective by an 
adverb , then we have modified or limited the subject by a phrase, 
and finally by a clause. Now let ust try and do the same thing to 
the predicate and the object : 



184 Syntax, as Melating to Adverbs, 

Men love women. 

Men love the women. 

Men love the Kood women. 

Men love the very good women. 

Men love dearly the very good women. 

Men love dearly the very good women of this city. 

Men love dearly the very good women of this city, who are respected by 

all the world. 

The whole sentence will therefore be ; " The very worthy men in 
this city, who are noted for tlieir excellent character, love dearly 
the very good women of this city, who are respected by all the 
world." This, therefore, has now become a complex sentence, 
of which the chief clause is, "Men love women," and all the rest 
modifies the subject, the predicate, and the object of this clause. 
Of course, it miglit be extended mucli farther ; but this will do to 
show you how a sentence grows: or, if you please, how it is 
built up. Should you ever be requested to give a trial lesson in 
English grammar, in a class of scholars who have learned some- 
thing of the subject, you cannot do better than show them, in 
this manner, how a sentence is formed. 



LETTER XX. 

SYNTAX, AS RELATING TO ADVERBS, PREPOSITIONS, AND CON- 
JUNCTIONS. 

283. After what has been said, my dear James, on the 
subject of the Verb, there remains little to be added. The 
Adverbs, Prepositions, and Co7ijunctions, are all words 
which never vary their endings. Their uses have been 
sufficiently illustrated in the Letters on the Syntax of 
Nouns, Pronouns, and Verbs. In a Letter, which is yet to 
come, and which will contain specimens oi false grammar, 
the misuse of many words, belonging to these inferior 
Parts of Speech, will be noticed ; but it would be a waste 
of your time to detain you by an elaborate account of 
that which it is, by this time, hardly possible for you not 
to understand. 

284. Some grammarians have given lists of Adverbs, 



J'repositlons, and Conjunctions. 185 

Prepositions, and Conjunctions. For what reason I know 
not, seeing that they have not attempted to give lists of 
the words of other parts of speech. These lists must be 
defective, and, therefore, worse than no lists. To find out 
the meaning of single words, the Dictionary is the place. 
The business of grammar is to show the connection be- 
tween words, and the manner of using words properly. 
The sole cause of this dwelling upon these parts of speech 
appears to me to have been a notion that they would seem 
to be neglected, unless a certain number of pages of the 
book were allotted to each. To be sure each of them is a 
part of speech, as completely as the little finger is a part 
of the body ; but few persons will think that, because we 
descant very frequently, and at great length, upon the 
qualities of the head and heart, we ought to do the same 
with regard to the qualities of the little finger. 

285. I omitted, in the Letter on Verbs, to notice the 
use of the word thing; and I am not sorry that I did, be- 
cause by my noticing it in this concluding paragraph, the 
matter may make a deeper impression on your mind. 
Thing is, of course, a rioun. A. pen is a thing, and every 
animal, or creature, animate or inanimate, is a thing. We 
apply it to the representing of every creature in the uni- 
verse, except to men, women, and children ; and a creature 
is that which has been created, be it living, like a horse, 
or dead, hke dirt or stones. The use of the word thing, 
as far as this goes, is plainly reconcilable to reason ; but 
"to get drunk is a beastly thing.''' Here is neither human 
being, irrational animal, nor inanimate creature. Here is 
merely an action. "Well, then, this action is the thingj 
for, as you have seen in Letter XIX, paragraph 273, a 
verb in the infinitive mode has, in almost all respects, the 
functions and powers of a noun. " It was a most atrocious 
thing to uphold the Bank of England in refusing to give 
gold for its promissory notes, and to compel the nation to 
submit to the wrong that it sustained from that refusal." 



186 Syntax. 

The meaning is, that the whole of these measures or trans- 
actions constituted a most atrocious deed or thing. 

Cobbett despatches the syntax of adverbs in half-a-dozen lines ; 
and yet there is one little matter connected with the use of these 
words that has, perhaps, caused more uncertainty, perplexing 
uncertainty, than anything connected with grammar. We say, 
rightly, that he fights bravely and she sings finely; but shall I say 
that he looks bravely and that her voice sounds finely ? I may say 
that he dances smoothly and that she plays sweetly; but shall 
I say that his coat feels smoothly and that she looks sweetly? If 
not, how am I to know when to use the adverb and when the 
adjective? 

This, as I have said, is a matter which has puzzled many a stu- 
dent of grammar, and caused anxiety to many a young writer. Here 
is a rule which I have never seen in any grammar, but which, I think, 
will cover the majority of such cases, and is easily understood 
and remembered : After all the verbs referring to the five senses, 
the adjective, and not the adverb, is to be used: as. It tastes good; 
it smells nice; it sounds harsh; it feels smooth; it looks handsome. 
Expressed in a larger and more comprehensive manner, the rule 
might stand thus : Wherever manner is to be expressed, use the 
adverb; wherever quality is to be expressed, use the adjective. 
Cobbett repeatedly uses the expression ' ' talks fine; " meaning, of 
course, fine talk, and not the manner of speaking. In the same 
way, we must say, "I arrived here safe and sound," and not safely 
and soundly; for it is not the manner of arriving, but the state in 
which he arrived, that is meant. 

I thought that Cobbett explained somewhere in this grammar 
the diference between so and sv^h; but I cannot find it. Mr. 
Swinton says : ' ^So has sometimes a pronominal use ; as, ' Whether 
he is a genius or not, he is considered so' — (a genius)." I think 
this is an error; so is used adjectively and adverbially, not pro- 
nominally ; such is used pronominally ; as. Whether he be a genius 
or not, he is considered such; whether he be rich or not, he is 
considered so. (See paragraph 143.) 



/Specimens of False Grammar. 187 



LETTEE XXI. 

specimens of false grammar, taken from the writings of 
doctor johnson, and from those of doctor watts. 

My dear James : 

The chief object of this Letter is to prove to you the 
necessity of using great care and caution in the construc- 
tion of your sentences. When you see writers like Dr. 
Johnson and Dr. Watts committing grammatical errors, 
and, in some instances, making their words amount to 
nonsense, or at least making their meaning doubtful ; when 
you see this in the author of a grammar and of a dictionary 
of the English language, and in the author of a work on 
the subject of logic; and when you are informed that 
these were two of the most learned men that England 
ever produced, you cannot fail to be convinced that con- 
stant care and caution are necessary to prevent you from 
committing not only similar, but much greater, errors. 

Another object, in the producing of these specimens, is 
to convince you that a knowledge of the Latin and Greek 
languages does not prevent men from writing bad Enghsh. 
Those languages are, by impostors and their dupes, called 
" the learned languages ; " and those who have paid for 
having studied them are said to have received " a liberal 
education." These appellations are false, and, of course, 
they lead to false conclusions. Learning^ as a noun, 
means knoioledge, and learned means knowing^ or pos- 
sessed of knowledge. Learning is, then, to be acquired 
by conception; and, it is shown va. judgment, in reasoning, 
and in the various modes of employing it. What, then, 
can learning have to do with any particular tongue! 
Good grammar, for instance, written in Welsh, or in the 
language of the Chippewa savages, is more learned than 
bad grammar written in Greek, The learning is ia the 



188 Specimens of False Grammar. 

mind and not in the tongue^ learning consists of ideas 
and not of the noise that is made by the mouth. If, for 
instance, the Reports drawn up by the House of Commons, 
and which are compositions discovering in every sentence 
ignorance the most profound, were vn'itten in Latin, 
should we then call them learned? Should we say that 
the mere change of the words from one tongue into 
another made that learned which was before unlearned"? 
As well may we say that a falsehood written in English 
would have been truth if written in Latin ; and as well 
may we say that a certain handwriting is a learned hand- 
writing, or, that certain sorts of ink and paper are learned 
ink and paper, as that a language, or tongue, is a learned 
language or tongue. 

The cause of the use of this false appellation, " learned 
languages," is this, that those who teach them in England 
have, in consequence of their teaching, very large estates 
in house and land, which are public property, but which 
are now used for the sole benefit of those teachers, who 
are, in general, the relations or dependents of the aristoc- 
racy. In order to give a color of reasonableness to this 
species of appropriation, the languages taught by the 
possessors are called " the learned languages ;" and which 
appellation is, at the same time, intended to cause the 
mass of the people to believe that the professors and 
learners of these languages are, in point of wisdom, far 
superior to other men ; and to establish the opinion that 
all but themselves are unlearned persons. In short, the 
appellation, like many others, is a trick which fraud has 
furnished for the purpose of guarding the snug possessors 
of the property against the consequences of the people's 
understanding the matter. 

It is curious enough that this appellation of " learned 
languages" is confined to the English nation and the 
American, which inherits it from the English. Neither 
in France, in Spain, in Italy, nor in Germany, is this false 



Specimens of False Grammar. 189 

and absurd appellation in use. The same motives have 
not existed in those countries. There the monks and 
other priests have inherited from the founders. They 
had not any occasion to resort to this species of imposition. 
But in England the thing required to be glossed over. 
There was something or other required in that country 
as an apology for taking many millions a year from the 
public to keep men to do no apparently useful thing. 

Seeing themselves unable to maintain the position that 
the Latin and Greek are more " learned languages " than 
others, the impostors and their dupes tell us that this is 
not what they mean. They mean, they say, not that those 
languages are, in them,selves, more learned than others: 
but that, to possess a knowledge of them is a proof that 
the possessor is a learned man. To be siure, they do not 
offer us any argument in support of this assertion ; while 
it would be easy to show that the assertion must, in every 
case, be false. But let it suffice, for this time, that we 
show that the possession of the knowledge of those lan- 
guages does not prevent men from committing numerous 
grammatical errors when they write in their native lan- 
guage. 

I have, for this purpose, fixed upon the writings of 
Doctor Johnson and of Doctor Watts ; because, besides 
its being well known that they were deeply skilled in 
Latin and Greek, it would be difficult to find two men 
vrith more real learning. I take also the two works for 
which they are respectively the most celebrated; the 
Rambler of Doctor Johnson, and the Logic of Doctor 
Watts. These are works of very great learning. The 
Rambler, though its general tendency is to spread a 
gloom over life, and to damp all enterprise, private as 
well as public, displays a vast fund of knowledge in the 
science of morals; and the Logic, though the religious 
zeal of its pious, sincere, and benevolent author has led 
him into the very great error of taking his examples of 



190 Specime^is of False Grammar. 

self-evident propositions from amongst those, many of 
which great numbers of men think not to be self-evident, 
is a work wherein profound learning is conveyed in a 
style the most simple, and in a manner the most pleasing. 
It is impossible to believe that the Logic was not revised 
with great care ; and, as to the Rambler, the biographer 
of its author tells us that the Doctor made six thousand 
corrections and alterations before the work was printed 
in volumes. 

The Rambler is in Numbers; therefore, at the end of 
each extract from it, I shall put the letter R, and the 
Nttmher. The Logic is divided into Parts and Chapters. 
At the end of each extract from it, I shall put L ; and 
then add the Part and Chapter. I shall range the ex- 
tracts under the names of the parts of speech to which 
the erroneous words respectively belong. 

ARTICLES. 

" I invited her to spend the day in viewing a seat and 
gardens.^' — R. No. 34. 

"For all our speculative acquaintance with things 
should be made subservient to our better conduct in the 
civil and religious Hfe." — L. Introduction. 

The indefinite article a cannot, you koW]^, be put before 
2i plural noun. We cannot say a gardens; but this is, ia 
fact, said in the above extract. It should have been " a 
seat and its gardens." '■^ Civil and religious life^'' in the 
second extract are general and indefinite. The article, 
therefore, was unnecessary, and is improperly used. Look 
back at the use of Articles, Letter IV. 

NOUNS. 

"Among the innumerable historical authors, who fill 
every nation with accounts of their ancestors, or under- 
take to transmit to futurity the events of their own time. 



Specimens of False Grammar. 191 

the greater part, when fashion and novelty have ceased to 
recommend them, are of no other use than chronological 
inem,orials, which necessity may sometimes require to be 
consTilted."— E. No. 122. 

This is all confusion. Whose ancestors ? The nation'' s 
ancestors are meant ; but the author'' s are expressed. The 
two theirs and the thon clearly apply to the sam,e Noun. 
How easily all this confusion would have been avoided 
by considering the nation as a singular, and sayiag its 
ancestors ! In the latter part of the sentence, the authors 
are called chronological memorials ^ and though we may, 
in some cases, use the word author for author's work; 
yet, in a case like this, where we are speaking of the 
authors as actors., we cannot take such a liberty. 

" Each of these classes of the human race has desires, 
fears, and conversation pecuUar to itself; cares which 
another cannot feel, and pleasures which he cannot par- 
take."— E. No. 160. ' 

The noun of multitude, classes, being preceded by each, 
has the pronoun itself properly put after it ; but the he 
does not correspond with these. It should have been it. 
With regard to these two extracts, see paragraph 181. 

" His great ambition was to shoot flying, and he, there- 
fore, spent whole days in the woods, pursuing game, 
which, before he was near enough to see them, his ap- 
proach frighted away." — E. No. 66. 

Game is not a noun of i nultitude, like m^oh, or House 
of Commons. There are different games or pastimes; 
but this word, as applied to the describing of wild ani- 
mals, has no plural ; and, therefore, cannot have a plural 
pronoun to stand for it. 

"The obvious duties of piety towards God and love 
towards man, with the governments of all our inclinations 
and passions." — L. Part 4. 

This plui-al is so clearly wrong that I need not show 
why it is wrong. 



192 Specmietis of False Grammar. 

"And by this -tnean they will better judge what to 
choose." — L. Part 4. 

Mean, as a noun, is never used in the singular. It, 
like some other words, has broken loose from all principle 
and rule. By universal acquiescence it is become always 
a plural, whether used with singular or plural pronouns 
and articles or not. Doctor Watts, in , other instances, 
says, this means. 

It is curious enough tliat we have several phu'al words like this, 
used in a singular manner. We not only say this means, but this 
nexos, this series, and this species. We say, "Great pains is taken, 
he has taken much pains;" because, in this sense, pains means 
exertion, trouble; while in the plural it means bodily pains. Mean, 
means, are properly used in the singular and plural when applied 
to the terms used in proportion. When you are speaking of 
various distinct things or operations, you ought to say, "By these 
means;" but when you are speaking of things or circumstances in 
a mass, you must say, "By this means.''' Such sentences as, "This 
is one means of gaining your end," and "The best means is by fair 
play," are perfectly correct. 

" Having delayed to buy a coach myself, till I should 
have the lady's opinion, for whose use it was intended." 
— K. No. 34. 

We know that whose relates to lady, according to the 
Doctor's meaning; but, grammatically, it does not. It 
relates to opinion. It should have been, " the opinion of 
the lady, for whose use." See Syntax of Nouns, Letter 
XVI, paragraphs 170, 171. 



PRONOUNS. 

" Had the opinion of my censurers been luianimous, it 
might have overset my resolutions ; but, since I find them 
at variance with each other, I can, without scruple, neg- 
lect them, and follow my own imagination." — R. No. 23. 

You see the Doctor has, in the last member of the sen- 
tence, the censurers in his eye, and he forgets his nomina- 



Specimeois of False Grammar. 193 

tive, opinion. It is the ojDinion that was oiot unanimous, 
and not the censiirers who were not unanimous ; for they 
were unanimous in censuring. 

^^They that frequent the chambers of the sick will gen- 
erally find the sharpest pains and most stubborn mala- 
dies among them whom confidence in the force of nature 
formerly betrayed to negligence or irregularity ; and that 
superfluity of strength, which was at once their boast and 
their snare, has often, to the end, no other effect than 
that it continues them long in impotence and anguish." — 
R. No. 38. 

The they and the first them ought to be those; the to 
ought to be into. The two theirs and the last the^n ar6 
not absolutely faulty, but they do not clearly enough re- 
late to their antecedent. 

" Metissa brought with her an old maid, recommended 
by her mother, loho taught her all the arts of domestic 
management, and was, on every occasion, her chief agent 
and directress. They soon invented one reason or other 
to quarrel with all my servants, and either prevailed on 
me to tm-n them away, or treated them so ill that they left 
me of themselves, and always supplied their places with 
some brought irom my wife's family." — R. No. 35. 

Here is perfect confusion and pell-mell! Which of the 
two, the old maid or the mother, was it that taught the 
arts of domestic management? And which of the two 
was taught, Metissa or the old maid? " They soon 
invented." Who are they? Axe there two, or all the 
three? And who supplied the places of the servants? 
The meaning of the words clearly is that the servants 
themselves supplied the places. It is very rarely that we 
meet with so bad a sentence as this. 

" I shall not trouble you with a history of the strata- 
gems practised upon my judgment, or the allui-ements 
tried upon my heart, which, if you have, in any part of 
yovu Ufe, been acquainted with rural politics, you will 
9 



194 Specivxens of False Grconmar. 

easily conceive. Their arts have no great variety, they 
thhik nothing worth their care but money." — R. No. 35. 

" Their arts ;" but whose arts ? There is no antecedent, 
except ^^ rural politics f and thus, all this last sentence is 
perfect nonsense. 

" But the fear of not being approved as just copiers of 
human manners is not the most important concern that 
a,n author of this sort ought to have before him.'''' — R. 
No. 4. 

An author cannot be said to fear not to be approved 
as just copiers. The word author ought to have been in 
the plural, and him ought to have been them. 

" The wit, whose vivacity condemns slower tongues to 
silence; the scholar, whose knowledge allows no man to 
think he instructs him.'''' — R. No. 188. 

Which of the two is allowed ? The scholar or the no 
man ? Which of the two does he relate to ? Which of 
the two does the him relate to ? By a little reflection we 
may come at the Doctor's meaning ; but if we may stop 
to discover the grammatical meaning of an author's 
words, how are we to imbibe the science which he would 
teach us ? 

" The state of the possessor of humble virtues, to the 
aflfector of great excellencies, is that of a small cottage of 
stone, to the palace raised with ice by the Empress of 
Russia; it was, for a time, splendid and luminous, but 
the first sunshine melted it to nothing." — R. No. 22. 

Which, instead of it, would have made clear that which 
is now dubious, for it may relate to cottage as well as to 
palace ; or it may relate to state. 

We do not now say excellencies, but excellences, for the singular is 
excellence. Excellencies is the plural of excellency, whicli is now sel- 
dom used except as a title of honor. It is the same kind of error 
as Castlereagh's indulgencies, which you will see by-and-by. 

" The love of retirement has, in all ages, adhered closely 
to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowl- 



Specimens of False Grammar. 195 

edge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed every- 
thing generally supposed to confer happiness, have been 
forced to seek it in the shades of privacy." — R. No. 7. 

To seek what? The love of retirement, or everything? 
The Doctor means happiness, but his words do not meanit. 

"Those who enjoyed" ought to be "Those who have enjoyed;" 
because no particular time is mentioned. (See paragraph 261.) 

"Yet there is a certain race of men that make it then.' 
duty to hinder the reception of every work of learning or 
genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, 
and value themselves upon giving ignorance and envy the 
first notice of a jyrey^ — R. No. 3. 

That, or who, may, as we have seen, be the relative of 
a noun, which is the name of a rational being or beings ; 
but both cannot be used, applicable to the same noun in 
the same sentence. Nor is " a prey " proper. JPrey has 
no plural. It is like fat, meat, grease, garbage, and many 
other words of that description. 

" For, among all the animals upon which nature has 
impressed deformity and horror, there was none whom 
he durst not encounter rather than a beetle." — R. No. 126. 

Here are lohom and which used as the relatives to the 
same noun; and, besides, we know that whom can, in no 
case, be a relative to irrational creatures, and, in this case, 
the author is speaking of such creatures only. '■'■Horror''' 
is not a thing that can be impressed upon another thing 
so as to be seen. Horror is o. feeling of the m,ind; for, 
though we say " horror was visible on his countenance,'''' 
we clearly mean that the outward signs of horror were 
visible. We cannot see horror as we can deformity. It 
should have been '•'■deform.ity and hideousness.'''' 

" To cull from the mass of mankind those individuals 
upon which the attention ought to be most employed." — 
R. No. 4. 

The antecedent belongs to rational beings, and, there- 
fore, the which should have been whom. 



l96 Specimens of liaise Grammar. 

" This determination led me to Metissa, the daughter 
of Chrisophilus, vihose person was at least without de- 
formity."— R. No. 35. 

The person of which of the two? Not of the old papa, 
to be sure ; and yet this is what the words mean. 

" To persuade them to ho are entering the world, that 
all are equally vicious, is not to awaken judgment." — R. 
No. 119. 

Those persons who are entering the world, and not 
any particular persons of whom we have already been 
speaking. We cannot say them persons; and, therefore, 
this sentence is incorrect. 

" Of these pretenders, it is fit to distinguish those who 
endeavor to deceive from them who are deceived." — R. 
No. 189. 

" I have, therefore, given a place to what may not be 
useless to them whose chief ambition is to please." — R. 
No. 34. 

The thems in these two sentences should be those. 
But '■'■them, who are deceivecV has another sort of error 
attached to it, for the who, remember, is not, of itself, a 
nominative. The antecedent, as you have seen, must be 
taken into view. This antecedent, must be the persons, 
understood ; and then we have them persons are deceived. 

" Reason, as to the power and principles of it, is the 
common gift of God to man." — L. Introduction. 

The it may relate to power as well as to reason. There- 
fore, it would have been better to say, " Reason, as to its 
power and principles ;" for if clearness is always neces- 
sary, how necessary must it be in the teaching of logic ! 

"All the prudence that any man exerts in his common 
concerns of life." — L. Introduction. 

Any man means, here, the same as men in general, and 
the concerns mean the concerns common to men in gen- 
eral ; and therefore the article the should have been used 
instead of the pronoun his. 



Specimens of False Grammar. 197 

" It gives pain to the mind and memory, and exposes 
the unskillful hearer to mingle the superior and inferior 
particulars together ; it leads them, into a thick wood in- 
stead of open daylight, and places them in a labyrinth 
instead of a plain path." — L. Part 4, Chap 2. 

The (/rammar is clearly had ; and the rhetoric is not 
quite free from fault. Labyrinth is the opposite of plain 
path, but 02:'en daylight is not the opposite of a thick 
loood. Open plain would have been better than open 
daylight; for open daylight may exist along with a thick 
wood. 

VEEBS. 

" There are many things which we every day see others 
tmable to perform, and, perhaps, have even miscarried 
ourselves in attempting ; and yet can hardly allow to be 
difficult."— E. No. 122. 

TJhis sentence has in it one of the greatest of faults. 
The nominative case of can allow is not clear to us. 
This is a manner too elliptical. " We can hardly allow 
them,'"' is what was meant. 

"A man's eagerness to do that good, to lohich he is not 
called, will betray him into crimes." — E. No. 8. 

The man is not called to the good, but to do the good. 
It is not my business, at this time, to criticise the opinions 
of Doctor Johnson; but I cannot refrain from just re- 
marking upon this sentence, that it contains the sum 
total of passive obedience and non-resistance. It con- 
demns all disinterested zeal and everything worthy of the 
name of patriotism. 

" We are not compelled to toil through half a folio to 
be convinced that the author has broke his promise." — ^E. 
No. 1. 

"The Muses, when they sung before the throne of 
Jupiter."— E. No. 3. 

In the first of these, the past time is used where the 



198 Specimens of False G-rarmnar. 

passive participle ought to have been used; and in the 
second, the passive participle is used in the place of the 
past time, broken and sang were the proper words. 

" My purpose was, after ten months more spent in com- 
merce, to have withdrawn my wealth to a safer country." 
— E. No. 120. 

The purpose was present, and therefore it was his pur- 
pose to withdraw his wealth. 

*'A man may, by great attention, persuade others that 
he really has the qualities that he presumes to boast ; but 
the hour will come when he should exert them, and then 
whatever he enjoyed xn. praise, he must suffer in reproachS 
— E. No. 20. 

Here is a complete confounding of times. Instead of 
should, it should be ought to; and instead of enjoyed, it 
should be jnay have enjoyed. The sense is bad, too ; for 
how can a man suffer in reproach what he has enjoyed in 
praise? 

"He had taught himself to think riches more valua- 
ble than nature designed them, and to expect from them 
"— E. No. 20. 

"I could prudently adventure an inseparable union.'''' — 
E. No. 119. 

"I propose to endeavor the entertainmetit of my coun- 
trymen." — E. No. 1. 

" He may, by attending the remarks, which every paper 
will produce." — E. No. 1. 

In each of these four sentences, a neuter verb has the 
powers of an active [transitive] verb given to it. De- 
signed them to bey adventure on/ endeavor to entertain/ 
attending ^o." To design a thing is to draw it; to 
attend a thing is to wait on it. No case occurs to me, 
at present, wherein adventure and endeavor can be active 
[transitive] verbs; but, at any rate, they ought not to 
have assumed the active office here. 

"J loas not condemned in my youth to solitude, either 



Specimens of False Grammar. 199 

by indigence or deformity, nor passed the earlier part of 
life without the flattery of courtship." — R. No. 119. 

The verb cannot change from a neuter to an active 
without a repetition of the nominative. It should have 
been, nor did I pass; or, nor passed I. 

"Anthea ^oas content to call a. coach, and crossed the 
brook."— R. No. 34. 

It should be " she crossed the brook." 

"He will be welcomed with ardor, unless he destroys 
those recommendations by his faiilts." — R. No. 160. 

'■'■If he thinks his own judgment not sufficiently en- 
lightened, he may rectify his opinions." — R. No. 1. 

'■'■If he 'finds, with all his industry, and all his artifices, 
that he cannot deserve regai'd, or cannot obtain it, he may 
let the design fall."— R. No. 1. 

The subjunctive mode ought to be used in all these 
three sentences. In the first, the meaning is, "unless he 
should destroy." In the last two, the Doctor is speaking 
of his own undertaking ; and he means, " the author, if 
he should think, if he should find; may then rectify his 
opinions; may then let fall his design." He therefore 
should have written, "if he think; if he find." 

"Follow solid argument wherever it leads you." — 
L. Part 3. 

Wherever it may lead you, shall lead you, is meant; 
and, therefore, the subjunctive mode was necessary. It 
should have been, "wherever it lead you." 

"See, therefore, that your general definitions, or de- 
scriptions, are as accurate as the nature of the thing will 
bear ; see that your general divisions and distributions be 
just and exact; see that your axioms be sufficiently evi- 
dent; see that your principles be well drawn." — L. Part 4. 

All these members are correct, except the first, where 
the verb is put in the indicative mode instead of the sub- 
junctive. All the four have the same turn ; they are all 
in the same mode, or manner ; they should, therefore, all 



200 Specimens of False Grammar. 

have had the verb in the sam,e form. They all required 
the subjunctive form. 



PARTICIPLES. 

"Or, it is the drawing a conclusion, which was before 
either unknown or dark." — L. Introduction. 

It should be "the drawing of & conclusion;" for, in 
this case, the active participle becomes a noun. "The 
act of drawing" is meant, and clearly understood; and we 
cannot say, " the act drawing a conclusion." When the 
article comes before, there must be the preposition after 
the participle. To omit the preposition in such "cases is 
an error very common, and therefore I have noticed the 
error in this instance, in order to put you on your guard. 

ADVERBS. 

"For thoughts are only criminal when they are first 
chosen, and then voluntarily continued.''' — R. N. 8. 

The station, or place, of the adverb is a great matter. 
The Doctor does not mean here that which his words 
mean. He means that "thoughts are criminal, only when 
they are first chosen and then voluntarily continued." As 
the words stand, they mean that "thoughts are nothing 
else, or nothing more, than criminal," in the case supposed. 
But here are other words not very properly used. I 
should like to be informed hov) a thought can be chosen; 
how that is possible; and also how we can continue a 
thought, or how we can discontinue a thought at our will. 
The science here is so very profound that we cannot see 
the bottom of it. Swift says, " whatever is dark is deep. 
Stir a puddle, and it is deeper than a well." Doctor 
Johnson deals too much in this kind of profundity. 

There is no word in our language more frequently misused than 
this word only. People constantly write and speak such sentences 



Specimens of liaise OratamaT. 201 

as these ; " I have only received ten dollars. He only sells leather. 
He only speaks French; " and so on. The word only must be 
placed next to the word which it modifies : I have received only 
ten dollars; he sells only leather, or leather only; he speaks only 
French. As the sentences stand in the first instance, they 'do not 
mean what they are intended to mean : the first means, only 
received not spent or lost; the second, only sells leather, never 
buys any ; the third only speaks French, never writes it. 

" I have heard hoio some critics have been pacified with 
claret and a supper, and others laid asleep with the soft 
notes of flattery." — E. No. 1. 

Hoio means the maimer in which. As, '■'■How do you 
do?" That is, '•'•In what manner do you carry yourself 
on "? " But the Doctor tells us here, in other words, the 
precise manner in which the critics were pacified. The 
hoio, therefore, should have been that. 

"I hope not much to tu-e those whom I shall not happen 
to please." — E. No. 1. 

He did not mean that he did not m,uch hope, but that 
he hoped not to tire much. "I hope I shall not much 
tire those whom I may not happen to please." This was 
what he meant ; but he does not say it. 

"And it is a good judgment alone can dictate how/ar 
to proceed in it and when to stop." — L. Part 4. 

Doctor Watts is speaking here of writing. In such a 
case an adverb, like how far, expressive of longitudinal 
space, introduces a rhetorical Jigure; for the plain mean- 
ing is, that judgment will dictate how much to write on it, 
and not how far to proceed in it. The figure, however, is 
very proper, and much better than the hteral words. 
But when a figure is begun it should be carried on 
throughout, which is not the case here; for the Doctor 
begins with a figure of longitudinal space, and ends with 
a figure of time. It should have been ^'^ where to stop." 
Or, "how long to proceed in it and when to stop." To 
tell a man how far he is to go into the Western countries 
of America, and lohen he is to stop, is a very different 
9* 



202 Specimens of False G-ram^nar. 

thing from telling liim how far lie is to go and where he 
is to stop. I have dwelt thus on this distinction, for the 
piu'pose of putting you on the watch, and guarding you 
against confounding figures. The less you use them the 
better, till you understand more about them. 

"jTn searching out matters of fact in times past or in 
distant places, in which case moral evidence is sufficient, 
and moral certainty is the utmost that can be attained, 
here we derive a greater assurance of the truth of it by a 
number of persons, or multitude of circumstances, con- 
curring to bear witness to it.'' — L. Part 3. 

The adverb here is wholly unnecessary, and it does 
harm. But what shall we say of the of it, and the to it? 
What is the antecedent of the it? Is matters of fact the 
antecedent? Then them, and not it, should have been 
the pronoTin. Is evidence the antecedent? Then we have 
circumstances bearing witness to evidence! Is certainty 
the antecedent? Then we have the truth of certainty! 
Mind, my dear James, this sentence is taken from a 
treatise on logic ! How necessary it is, then, for you to 
be careful in the use of this powerful little word it! 

PKEPOSITIONS. 

"And, as this practice is a commodious subject of rail- 
lery to the gay, and of declamation to the serious, it has 
been ridiculed " — R. No. 123. 

With the gay ; for to the gay means that the raillery 
is addressed to the gay, which was not the author's 
meaning. 

" "When I was deliberating to what new qualifications I 
should aspire." — R. No. 128. 

With regard to, it ought to have been ; for we Cannot 
deliberate a thing nor to a thing. 

"If I am not commended for the beauty of my works, 
I may hope to be pardoned for their brevity." — R. No. 1. 



/^ecimens of l^atse Grammar. 203 

We may commend him /or the beauty of his works 
and we may j^:>arc?o?^ himybr theii- brevity, if we deem the 
brevity a fault/ but this is not what he means. He 
means that, at any rate, he shall have the merit of brevity. 
"If I am not commended for the beauty of my works, I 
may hope to be pardoned on account of their brevity." 
This was what the Doctor meant; but this would have 
manned a little the antithesis/ it would have unsettled 
a little of the balance of that see- saw in which Dr. Johnson 
so much delighted, and which, falling into the hands of 
novel-writers and of Members of Parliament, has, by 
moving unencumbered with any of the Doctor's reason or 
sense, lulled so many thousands asleep! Dr. Johnson 
created a race of writers and speakers. "Mr. Speaker, 
that the state of the nation is very critical, all men must 
allow; but that it is wholly desperate, few men will 
believe." When you hear or see a sentence like this, be 
sure that the person who speaks or' writes it has been 
reading Dr. Johnson, or some of his imitators. But, ob- 
serve, these imitators go no fvu'ther than the frame of the 
sentence. They, in general, take special care not to imi- 
tate the Doctor in knowledge and reasoning. 

I have now lying on the table before me forty-eight 
errors, by Doctor Watts, in the use or omission of Prep- 
ositions. I will notice but two of them ; the first is an 
error of commission, the second of omission. 

" When we would prove the importance of any scrip- 
tural doctrine or duty, the multitude of texts wherein it 
is repeated and inculcated upon the reader seems natu- 
rally to instruct us that it is a matter of greater import- 
ance than other things which are but slightly or singly 
mentioned in the Bible." — L. Part 3. 

The words repeated and incidcated both apply to upon/ 
but we cannot repeat a thing upon a reader, and the 
words here used mean this. When several verbs or par- 
ticiples are joined together by a copulative conjunction, 



'204 Specimens of False Grammar. 

care must be taken that the act described by each verb, 
or participle, be such as can be performed by the agent, 
and performed, too, in the manner, or for the purpose, or 
on the object, designated by the other words of the sen- 
tence. 

The other instance of error in the use of the Preposi- 
tion occurs in the \erjjirst sentence in the Treatise on 
Logic. 

" Logic is the art of using reason well in our inquiries 
after truth, and the communication of it to others." — L. 
Introduction. 

The meaning of the words is this : that '-'■Logic is the 
art of using reason well in our inquiries after truth, and 
is also the communication of it to others." To be sure 
we do understand that it means that " Logic is the art of 
using reason well in our inquiries after truth, and in the 
communication of it to others ;" but, surely, in a case like 
this, no room for doubt, or for hesitation, ought to have 
been left. Nor is "using reason welV a well-chosen 
phrase. It m,ay mean treating it well ; not ill-treating 
it. '■'- Using reason properly or employing reason well," 
would have been better. For, observe. Doctor Watts ia 
here giving a definition of the thing of which he was 
about to treat; and he is speaking to persons unac- 
quainted with that thing ; for as to those acquainted with 
it, no definition was wanted. Clearness, everywhere de- 
sirable, was here absolutely necessary. 

CONJUNCTIONS. 

"^5, notwithstanding all that wit, or malice, or pride, 
or prudence, will be able to suggest, men and women 
must, at last, pass their lives together, I have never, there- 
fore, thought those writers friends to human happiness 
who endeavor to excite in either sex a general contempt 
or suspicion of the other." — R. No. 149. 



Specimens of False Grammar. 205 

The as is unnecessary ; or the therefore is unnecessary. 

" But the happy historian has no other labor than of 
gathering what tradition pours down before him." — R. 
No. 122. 

" Some have advanced, without due attention to the 
consequences of this notion, that certain virtues have 
their correspondent faults, and therefore to exhibit either 
apart is to deviate from probability." — R. No. 4. 

"But if the power of example is so great as to take 
possession of the memory by a kiud of violence, care 
ought to be taken that, when the choice is unrestrained, 
the best examples only should be exhibited; and that 
which is likely to operate so strongly should not be mis- 
chievous or uncertain in its effects." — R. No. 4. 

It should have been, in the first of these extracts, " than 
that of gathering ;'' in the second, " and that therefore ;" 
in the third, " and that that which is likely." If the Doc- 
tor wished to avoid putting two thats close together, he 
should have chosen another form for his sentence. The 
that which is a relative, and the conjunction that was 
required to go before it. 

" It is, therefore, a useful thing, when we have a funda- 
mental truth, we use the synthetic method to explain it." 
— L. Part 4. 

It should have been that we use, or to use. 

WRONG PLACING OF WORDS. 

Of all the faults to be found in writing, this is one of 
the most common, and perhaps it leads to the greatest 
number of misconceptions. All the words may be the 
proper words to be used upon the occasion ; and yet, by 
a misplacmg of a part of them, the meaning may be 
wholly destroyed ; and even made to be the contrary of 
what it ought to be. 

'* I asked the question with no other intention than to 



206 /Specimens of liaise Granvmar. 

set the gentleman free from the necessity .of silence, and 
give him an opportunity of mingling on equal terms with 
a polite assembly, from which, however uneasy^ he could 
not then escape, hy a kind introduction of the only sub- 
ject on which I believed him to be able to speak with 
propriety."— E. No. 126. 

This is a very bad sentence altogether. '■'■However un- 
easy,''' applies to assembly, and not to gentleman. Only 
observe how easily this might have been avoided. " From 
which he, however uneasy, could not then escape." After 
this we have "Ae could not then escape, hy a hind intro- 
ductionP We know what is meant; but the Doctor, with 
all his commas, leaves the sentence confused. Let us see 
whether we cannot make it clear. " I asked the question 
with no other intention than, by a kind introduction of 
the only subject on which I believed him to be able to 
speak with propriety, to set the gentleman free from the 
necessity of silence, and to give him an opportunity of 
mingling on equal terms with a polite assembly, from 
which he, however uneasy, could not thcD escape " 

" Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the 
chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow- 
creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.''' — L. Introduc- 
tion. 

I have before showed an error in \h.e first sentence of 
Doctor Watt's work. This is the second sentence. The 
words, "m this lower world,''' are not words misplaced 
only; they are wholly unnecessary, and they do great 
harm; for they do these two things: first, they imply 
that there are brutes in the higher world; and, second, 
they excite a doubt, whether we are raised above those 
brutes. 

I might, my dear James, greatly extend the number of 
my extracts from both these authors ; but, these, I trust, 
are enough. I had noted down about two hundred errors 
in Dgctor Johnson's Lives of the Poets j but aftei'wards 



/Specimens of False Q-rarmnar. 207 

perceiving that lie had revised and corrected the Rambler 
with extraordinary care, I chose to make my extracts 
from that work rather than from the Lives of the Poets. 



DOUBLE-NEGATIVE AND ELLIPSIS. 

Before I dismiss the specimens of bad grammar, I will 
just take, from Tull, a sentence »which contains striking 
instances of the misapplication of Negatives, and of the 
JEllipsis. In our language tvjo negatives applied to the 
same verb, or to the same words of any sort, amount to an 
affirmative; as, " J)o not give him none of- your money." 
That is to say, '■'-Give him some of your money," though 
the contrary is meant. It should be, "Z>o not give him 
any of your money." Errors, as to this matter, occur 
most frequently when the sentence is formed in such a 
manner as to lead the writer out of sight and out of 
sound of the first negative before he comes to the point 
where he thinks a second is required ; as, '■'■Neither Rich- 
ard nor Peter, as I have been informed, and indeed as it 
has been proved to me, never gave James authority to 
write to me." You see it ought to be ever. But in this 
case, as in most others, there requires nothing more than 
a little thought. You see clearly that two negatives, ap- 
plied to the same verb, destroy the negative effect of each 
other. "I will wo< ?^e^;e/• write." This is the contrary of 
"I will never write." 

The Ellipsis, of which I spoke in Letter XIX, paragraph 
227, ought to be used with great care. Read that para- 
graph again ; and then attend to the following sentence of 
Mr. Tull, which I select in order to show you that very 
fine thoughts may be greatly marred by a too free use of 
the Ellipsis. 

" It is strange that no author should never have written 
fully of the fabric of ploughs ! Men of greatest learning 
have spent their time in contriving instruments to measure 



208 Spechnens of False Grrammat. 

the immense distance of the stars, and in finding out the 
dimensions and even weight of the planets. They think 
it more eligible to study the art of ploughing the sea 
with ships than of tilling the land with ploughs. They 
bestow the utmost of their skill, learnedly to pervert the 
natural use of all the elements for destruction of their 
own species by the bloody art of war ; and some waste 
their whole lives in studying how to arm death with new 
engines of horror, and inventing an infinite variety of 
slaughter; but think it beneath men of learning (who 
only are capable of doing it) to employ their learned 
labors in the invention of new, or even innproving the 
old, instruments^or increasing of bread." 

You see the never ought to be ever. You see that the 
the is left out before the word greatest, and again before 
weighty and, in this last-mentioned instance, the leaving 
of it out makes the words mean the '■'■even weight;" that 
IS to say, not the odd weight ; instead of " even the 
weight," as the author meant. The conjunction that is 
left out before " of tilling f before destruction, the article 
the is again omitted ; in is left out before inventing, and 
also before improving; and, at the close, the is left out 
before increasing. To see so fine a sentence marred in 
this way is, I hope, quite enough to guard you against 
the frequent commission of similar errors. 

We often see the word alo-ne wrongly used for onl'y; as, ' ' To 
which 1 am not alone bound by honor, but by law ;" but Mr. Tull 
uses only instead of alone. He should have said, " who alone are 
capable of doing it." 



Errors and Nonsense, etc. 209 



LETTER XXII. 

ERROES AND NONSENSE IN A KING's SPEECH. 

My dear James: 

In my first Letter, I observed to you that to the func- 
tions of statesmen and legislators was due the highest 
respect which could be shown by man to anything human ; 
but I, at the same time, observed that, as the degree and 
quality of our respect rose in proportion to the influence 
which the different branches of knowledge naturally had 
ii) the affairs and on the conditions of men, so, in cases of 
imperfection in knowledge, or of negligence in the appli- 
cation of it, or of its perversion to bad purposes, all the 
feelings opposite to that of respect rose in the same pro- 
portion ; and to one of these cases I have now to direct 
your attention. 

The speeches of the king are read by him to the Parlia- 
ment. They are composed by his ministers or select 
councillors. They are documents of great importance, 
treating of none but weighty matters; they are always 
styled Most Gracious, and are heard and answered with 
the most profound respect. 

The persons who settle upon what shall be the topics 
of these speeches, and who draw the speeches up, are a 
Lord High Chancellor, a First Lord of the Treasury, a 
Lord President of the Council, three Secretaries of State, 
a First Lord of the Admiralty, a Master General of the 
Ordnance, a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and perhaps 
one or two besides. These persons are called, when 
spoken of in a body, the Ministry. They are all members 
of the king's constitutional council, called the Privy 
Council, without whose assent the king can issue no 
proclamation nor any order affecting the people. This 
council, Judge Blackstone, taking the words of Coke, calls 



210 Errors and Nonsense 

"a noble, honorable, and reverend assembly." So that, in 
the Ministry, who are selected from the persons who com- 
pose this assembly, the nation has a right to expect some- 
thing very near to perfection in pomt of judgment and of 
practical talent. 

How destitute of judgment and of practical talent these 
persons have been, in the capacity of statesmen and of 
legislators, the present miserable and perilous state of 
England amply demonstrates; and I am now about to 
show you that they are equally destitute in the capacity 
of writers. There is some poet who says, 

"Of all the arts in which the learn'd excel, 
The first in rank is that of writing well" * 

And though a man may possess great knowledge, as a 
statesman and as a legislator, without being able to per- 
form what this poet would call writing well; yet, stirely, 
we have a right to expect in a minister the capacity of 
being able to write gramtnatically ; the capacity of put- 
ting his own meaning clearly down upon paper. But, in 
the composing of a king's speech, it is not one man, but 
nine men, whose judgment and practical talent are em- 
ployed. A king's speech is, too, a very short piece of 
writing. The topics are all distinct. Very little is said 
upon each. There is no reasoning. It is all plain matter 
of fact, or of simple observation. The thing is done with 
all the advantages of abundant time for examination and 
re-examination. Each of the ministers has a copy of the 
speech to read, to examine, and to observe upon; and 
when no one has anything left to suggest in the way of 
alteration or improvement, the speech is agreed to, and 
put into the mouth of the king. 

Surely, therefore, if in any human effort perfection can 
be expected, we have a right to expect it in a king's 

* Of all those arts in which the wise excel, 
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. 

Sheffield, JEarl of BiKkingharmhire. 



In a King's Speech. 211 

speech. You shall now see, then, what pretty stuff is 
put together, and delivered to the Parliament, under the 
name of Idng's speeches. 

The speech which I am about to examine is, indeed, a 
speech of the regent ; but I might take^ny other of these 
speeches. I choose this particular speech because the 
subjects of it are familiar in America as well as in "England, 
It was spoken on the 8th of November, 1814. I shall 
take a sentence at a time, in order to avoid confusion. 

'* My Lords and Gentlemen : It is with deep regret that 
I am again obliged to announce the continuance of his 
majesty's lamented indisposition." 

Even in this short sentence there is something equiv- 
ocal; for it may be that the prince's regret arises from 
Ms being obliged to announce, and not from the thing 
announced. If he had said, "With deep regret I an- 
nounce," or, " I announce with deep regret," there would 
have been nothing equivocal. And, in a composition like 
this, all ought to be as clear as the pebbled brook. 

"It would have given me great satisfaction to have been 
enabled to communicate to you the termination of the war 
between this country and the United States of America." 

The double compound times of the verbs, in the first 
part of the sentence, make the wo^ds mean that it would, 
before the prince came to the House, have given him great 
satisfaction to be enabled to communicate; whereas he 
meant, "It would noio have given me great satisfaction to 
be enabled to communicate." In the latter part of the 
sentence we have a little nonsense. What does termina- 
tion mean? It means, in this case, end or conclusion; 
and thus the prince wished to communicate an end to the 
wise men by whom he was siurounded ! To communicate 
is to impart to another any thing that we have in oui- 
possession or within our power. And so, the prince 
wished to impart the end to the noble lords and honorable 
gentlemen. He might wish to impart, or communicate 



212 Errors and Nonsense 

tlie n&u^s, or the intelligence of the end; but he could 
not communicate the end itself. "What should we say, if 
some one were to tell us, that an officer had arrived, and 
brought home the termination of a battle, and carried it 
to Carlton House and communicated it to the prince? 
"We should laugh at ovu* informant's ignorance of gram- 
mar, though we should understand what he meant. And, 
shall we, then, be so partial and so unjust as to reverence 
in king's councillors that which we should laugh at in one 
of our neighbors ? To act thus would be^ my dear son, a 
base abandonment of our reason, which is, to use the 
words of Dr. Watts, the common gift of God to man. 

^'■Although this war originated vnthe most unprovoked 
aggression on the part of the Government of the United 
States, and was calculated to promote the designs of the 
common enemy of Europe against the rights and inde- 
pendence of all other nations, I never have ceased to 
entertain a sincere desire to bring it to a conclusion on 
just and honorable terms^ 

The the most would lead us to suppose that there had 
been m.ore than one aggression, and that the war origi- 
nated in the most unprovoked of them; whereas the 
prince's meaning was that the aggression was an unpro- 
voked one, unprovoked in the superlative degree; and 
that, therefore, it was a most unprovoked aggression. 
The words all other iiations may mean all nations except 
England; or, all nations out of Europe; or, all nations 
other than the United States; or, all nations except the 
enemy's own nation. Guess you which of these is the 
meaning ; I confess that I am wholly unable to determine 
the question. But, what does the close of the sentence 
mean when taken into view with the although at the 
beginning? Does the prince mean that he would be 
justified in wanting to make peace on unjust and dis- 
honorable terms because the enemy had been the ag- 
gressor? He might, indeed, wish to make it on terms 



In a King's Speech. 213 

dishonorable, and even disgraceful, to tlie enemy; but 
could he possibly wish to make it on unjust tei'ms ? Does 
he mean that an aggression, however wicked and unpro- 
voked, would give him a right to do injustice? Yet, if 
he do not mean this, what does he mean"? Perhaps (for 
there is no certainty) he may mean that he wishes to 
bring the war to a conclusion as soon as he can get just 
and honorable terms from the eneviy; but, then, what is 
he to do with the although? Let us try this: "I am 
ready," say you, "to make peace, if you will give me just 
terms, although you are the aggressor.''' To be sure you 
ai'e, whether I he the aggressor or not! All that you can 
possibly have the face to ask of me v& justice; and, there- 
fore, why do you connect your wish for peace with this 
although? Either you mean that my aggression gives 
you a right to demand of me more than justice, or you 
talk nooisense. Nor must, we overlook the word ^'■govern- 
ment," which is introduced here. In the sentence before, 
the prmce wished to communicate the end of the war 
between '■'■this country and the United States;''' but in 
this sentence we are at war with "the G-overnment of the 
United States." This was a poor trick of sophistry, and 
as such we will let it pass; only observing that such 
low trickery is not very becoming in men selected from 
" a nohle, honorable, and reverend assembly." 

"I am still engaged in negotiations for this piirpose." 

That is, the purpose of bringing the war to a conclusion. 
A very good purpose; but why still? He had not told 
his nobles and his boroughmen that he had been engaged 
in negotiations. Even this short, simple sentence could 
not be made without fault. 

"The success of them must, however, depend on my 
disposition being met with corresponding sentim,ents on 
the part of the enemy." 

Now, suppose I were to say, "My wagon was met with 
Mr. Tredw ell's coach." Would you not think that some- 



214 Errors and Nonsense 

body had met the wagon and coach, both going together 
the same way? To be sure you would. But if I were to 
say, "My wagon was met by Mr. Tredwell's coach," you 
would think that they had approached each other from 
different spots. And, therefore, the prince should have 
said, "met by.''' This sentence, however, short as it hap- 
pily is, is too long to be content with one error. Dispo- 
sition, in this sense of the word, means state, or bent, or 
temper, of mind; and the word sentiments means thoughts, 
or opinions. So, here we have a temper of mind met by 
thoughts. Thoughts may correspond or agree with a tem- 
per of mind ; but how are they to 7}\eet it? If the prince 
had said, " My disposition being met by a corresponding 
disposition on the part of the enemy," he would have 
uttered plain and dignified language. 

"The operations of his majesty's forces by sea and 
land in the Chesapeake, in the course of the present year, 
have been attended with most brilliant and successful 
results." 

Were there only the bad placing of the different mem- 
bers of this sentence, the fault would be sufficient. But 
we do not know whether the prince means operations by 
sea and land, or forces by sea and land. 

It seems to me there is another error here. The prince speaks 
of operations of "forces by sea and land in the Cliesapeake." The 
Chesapeake is a bay. How can there be operations of forces by 
land in the Chesapeake? Does he mean the operations of the forces 
when they got to the bottom of the bay ? 

"The flotilla of the enemy in the Patuxent has been 
destroyed. The signal defeat of their land forces enabled 
a detachment of his majesty's army to take possession of 
the city of Washington ; and the spirit of enterprise, which 
has characterized all the movements in this quarter, has 
produced on the inhabitants a deep and sensible impres- 
sion of the calamities of a war in which they have been so 
wantonly involved." 



In a King's Speech. 215 

Enemy is not a noun of multitude, like gang or House 
of Commons, or den of thieves; and, therefore, when used 
in the singular, must have singular pronouns and verbs 
to agree with it. Their, in the second of these sentences, 
should have been his. A sensible impression is an impres- 
sion felt; a deep impression is one more felt. Therefore 
it was "a sensible and deep impression." But, indeed, 
sensible had no business there ; for an impression that is 
deep must be sensible. What would you think of a man 
who should say, " I have not only been stabbed, but my 
skin has been cut .^" Why, you would think, to be sure, 
that he must be a man selected from the noble, honorable, 
and reverend assembly at Whitehall ! 

" The expedition directed from Halifax to the northern 
coast of the United States has terminated in a manner 
not less satisfactory.'^ 

Than vihatf The prince has told us, before this, of 
nothing that has terminated satisfactorily. He has talked 
of a brilliant result, and of an impression made on the 
inhabitants; but of no termination has he talked; nor 
has he said a word about satisfaction. We must always 
take care how we use, in one sentence, words which refer 
to anything said in former sentences. 

" The successful course of this operation has been fol- 
lowed by the immediate submission of the extensive and 
important district east of the Penobscot river to his maj- 
esty's arms.'''' 

This sentence is a disgrace even to a ministry with a 
Jenkinson at its head. What do they mean by a course 
being followed by a ■ submission f And then, " has been 
followed by the immediate submission?" One would 
think that some French emigrant priest was employed to 
vsrrite this speech. He, indeed, would say, "« We suivie 
par la soumission immediate." But when we make use 
of any word like immediate, which carries us back to the 
time and scene of action, we must use the past tim,e of 



216 On Putting Sentences Together, 

the verb, and say, '■'■^oas followed by the immediate sub- 
mission." That is to say, was then followed by the then 
immediate ; and not has now been followed by the then 
immediate submission. The close of this sentence exhibits 
a fine instance of want of skill in the placing of the parts 
of a sentence. Could these noble and reverend persons 
find no place but the e7id for "io his ■majesty'' s armsT'' 
There was, but they could not see it, a place made on 
purpose, after the word submission. 

It is unnecessary, my dear James, for me to proceed 
further with an exposui^e of the bad grammar and the 
nonsense of this speech. There is not, in the whole 
speech, one single sentence that is free from error. Nor 
will you be at all surprised at this, if ever you should 
hear those persons uttering their oic7i speeches in those 
places which, when you were a naughty little boy, you 
used to call the '■'■Thieves'' Houses.'''' If you should ever 
hear them there, stammering and repeating and putting 
forth their nonsense, your wonder will be, not that they 
wrote a king's speech so badly, but that they contrived to 
put upon paper sentences sufficiently grammatical to en- 
able us to guess at the meaning. 



LETTEE XXIII. 

on putting sentences togethee, and on figurative 
language. 
My dear James: 

I have now done with the subject of grammar, which, 
as you know, teaches us to use vjords in a proper manner. 
But though you now, I hope, understand how to avoid 
error in the forming of sentences, I think it right not to 
conclude my instructions without saying a few words 
upon the subject of adding sentence to sentence, and on 
the subject of figurative language. 



and on Figurative Language. 217 

Language is made use of for one of three pui'poses ; 
namely, to inform, to convince, or to persuade. The 
first, requiring merely the talent of telling what we know, 
is a matter of little difficulty. The second demands rea- 
soning. The thii'd, besides reasoning, demands all the 
aid that we can obtain from the use of figures of speech, 
or, as they are sometimes called, figures of rhetoric, which 
last word means the power of persuasion. 

Whatever may be the pm-pose for which we use lan- 
guage, it seldom can happen that we do not stand in 
need of more than one sentence; and, therefore, others 
must be added. Thei'e is no precise 7'ide; there can be 
no precise rule, with regard to the manner of doing this. 
When we have said one thing, we must add another ; and 
so on, until we have said all that we have to say. But we 
ought to take care, and great care, that if any words in a 
sentence relate, in any way, to words that have gone be- 
fore, we make these words correspond grammatically 
with those foregoing words ; an instance of the want of 
which care you have seen in paragraph 178. 

The order of the matter Avill be, in almost all cases, 
that of your thoughts. Sit down to write what you have 
thought, and not to think what you shall lorite. Use the 
first words that occur to you, and never attempt to alter 
a thought; for that which has come of itself into your 
mind is likely to pass into that of another more readily 
and with more efi"ect than anything which you can, by 
reflection, invent. 

Never stop to 7nake choice of words. Put down your 
thought in words just as they come. Follow the order 
which your thought will point out ; and it will push you 
on to get it upon the paper as quickly and as clearly as 
possible. 

Thoughts come much faster than we can put them 
upon paper. They produce one another : and the order 
of their coming is, in almost every case, the best possible 
10 



218 On Putting Sentences Together^ 

order that they can have on paper; yet, if you have 
several in your mind, rising above each other in point of 
force, the most forcible will natm'ally come the last upon 
paper. 

Mr. Lindley Mxirray gives rules about long sentences 
and short sentences, and about a due mixture of long and 
short ; and he also gives rules about the letter's that sen- 
tences should begin with, and the syllables that they 
should end with. Such rules might be very well if we 
were to sing our writing; but when the use of writing 
is to inform, to convince, or to persuade, what can it 
have to do with such rules % 

There are certain connecting words which it is of im- 
portance to use properly ; such as therefore, which means 
for that cause, for that reason. We must take care, 
when we use such words, that there is occasion for using 
them. We must take care that when we use but, or for, 
or any other connecting word, the sense of our sentences 
requires such word to be used; for, if such words be im- 
properly used, they throw all into confusion. You have 
seen the shameful effect of an although in the king's 
speech, which I noticed in my last Letter. The adverbs 
when, then, while, now, there, and some others, are con- 
necting words, and not used in their strictly literal sense. 
For example: " Well, «Ae?^ I will not do it." 7%e?^, in its 
literal sense, means, at that time, or in that time, as, " I 
was in America then.'''' But "Well, theii^'' means, "Well, 
if that be so^'' or '•'■let that be so,'''' or "m that case.''' You 
have only to accustom yoxu^self a little to reflect on the 
meaning of these words; for that will soon teach you 
never to employ them improperly. 

A writmg, or written discourse, is generally broken into 
paragraphs. When a new paragraph should begin, the 
nature of your thoughts must tell you. The propriety of 
it will be pointed out to you by the difference between 
the thoughts that are coming and those which have gone 



and on Figurative Language. 219 

before. It is impossible to frame rules for regulating 
such divisions. When a man divides his vs^ork into Pai'ts, 
Books, Chapters, and Sections, he makes the division 
according to that which the matter has taken in his mind ; 
and, when he comes to write, he has no other guide for 
the distribution of his matter into sentences and para- 
graphs. 

Never write about any tnatter that you do not viell 
understand. If you clearly understand all about your 
matter, you will never want thoughts, and thoughts 
instantly become words. 

One of the greatest of all faults in writing and in speak- 
ing is this : the using of many Avords to say little. In 
order to guard yourself against this fault, inquire what is 
the substance or amount of what you have said. Take a 
long speech of some talking lord, and put down upon 
paper what the amount of it is. You will most likely 
find that the amount is very small ; but, at any rate, when 
you get it, you will then be able to examine it, and to tell 
what it is worth. A very few examinations of this sort 
will so frighten you, that you will be forever after upon 
your guard against talking a great deal and saying little. 

Figurative language is very fine when properly em- 
ployed; but figures of rhetoric are edge-tools, and two- 
edged tools, too. Take care how you touch them ! They 
are called figures, because they represent other things 
than the words in their literal meaning stand for. For 
instance: "The tyrants oppress and starve the people. 
The people would live amidst abundance, if those cormo- 
rants did not devour the fruit of their labor." I shall 
only observe to you, upon this subject, that, if you use 
figiu-es of rhetoric, you ought to take care that they do 
not make nonsense of what you say; nor excite the ridi- 
cule of those to whom you write. Mr. Murray, in an 
address to his students, tells them " that he is about to 
offer them some advice with regard to their future walks 



220 Oil Putting Sentences Together, ' 

in the paths of literature." Now, though a man may take 
a walk along a path, a walk means also the ground laid 
out in a certain shape, and such a walk is wider than a 
path. He, in another part of this address, tells them 
that they are in the morning of life, and that that is the 
season for exertion. The morning, my dear James, is not 
a season. The year, indeed, has seasons, but the day has 
none. If he had said the spring of life, then he might 
have added the season of exertion. I told you they were 
edge-tools. Beware of them. 

1 am now, my dear son, arrived at the last paragraph 
of my treatise, and I hope that, when you arrive at it, 
you will understand grammar sufficiently to enable you 
to write without committing frequent and glaiing errors. 
I shall now leave you, for about four months, to read and 
write English ; to practise what you have now been taught. 
At the end of those four months I shall have prepared a 
Grammar to teach you the French language, which lan- 
guage I hope to hear you speak, and to see you write 
well, at the end of one year from this' time. With English 
and French on your tongue and in your pen, you have a 
resource not only greatly valuable in itself, but a resource 
that you can be deprived of by none of those changes and 
chances which deprive men of pecuniary possessions, and 
which, in some cases, make the purse-proud man of yes- 
terday the crawling sycophant to-day. Health, without 
which life is not worth having, you will hardly fail to 
secure by early rising, exercise, sobriety, and abstemious- 
ness as to food. Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. 
It is the mind that lives ; and the length of life ought to 
be measui^ed by the number and importance of our ideas, 
and not by the number of our days. Never, therefore, 
esteem men merely on account of their riches or their 
station. Respect goodness, find it where you may. 
Honor talent wherever you behold it unassociated with 
vice-, but honor it most when accompanied with exertion, 



and on figurative Language. 221 

and especially when exerted in the cause of truth aaid 
justice ; and, above all things, hold it in honor when it 
steps forward to protect defenceless innocence against 
the attacks of powerful guilt. 

It is true that figures are edge-tools; but even edge-tools are 
perfectly safe in the hands of those who know how to use them. 
And with a little care and attention, anybody of common under- 
standing may learn how to use the ordinary figures of rhetoric, 
which are powerful auxiliaries in rendering speech effective. 
There is nothing that impresses like figures. They are edge-tools 
in another sense ; for they cut like swords and wound like daggers. 
Daniel O'Connell once silenced a troublesome opponent by sud- 
denly turning on him and exclaiming : "Sit down, you pestiferous 
ramcat ! " Lord Chatham finely designates the corrupt govern- 
ment contractor and jobber as "that blood-sucker, that muck- 
worm that calls himself 'the friend of government.'" "One 
should never take a vacation till the sexton gives him one,''' 
is far more forcible than "One should never cease working till 
death." Instead of saying that one must not express high, noble 
thoughts before low, vulgar people, how much more expressive it 
is to say, * ' Do not cast pearls before swine." "When Daniel Webster 
said of Alexander Hamilton, " He smote the rock of the national 
resources, and abundant streams of revenue burst forth; he 
touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it sprang upon its 
feet I" he uttered something far more impressive, far more forcible 
and beautiful, than if he had merely declared that Hamilton had 
improved the finances and strengthened the public credit of the 
coim.try. Everybody, the most illiterate as well as the most 
learned, uses figures. The illiterate man uses them unconsciously ; 
and so does the learned man in the ardor of speech ; in fact, most 
people use them, and ought to use them, unconsciously ; that is, 
without thinking that they are using figures. When a person 
exclaims, on seeing a large, fat man coming along, "Here comes 
Jumbo!" he never thinks that he is using a figure; and I have no 
doubt that even Cobbett himself, when he said that figures are 
edge-tools, never suspected that he was using a figure Our 
greatest writers, especially the poets, are full of figures. Shakes- 
peare bristles with them ; his works have more figures, and more 
happily-used figures, than perhaps those of any other author. In 
Macbeth alone there are figures of almost every description. Just 
count the figures in the murder scene and in the interview between 



222 0)1 Putting Sentences TogetJitv^ 

Macbeth and his wife after the murder, and you will be amazed 
at their number and variety. 

Of course, I do not pretend, in these few words at the end of the 
book, to teach you all about figures of rhetoric ; but I wish to give 
you an idea of what they are, that you may not be entirely ignorant 
of the matter. 

Though rhetoricians give names to a great number of deviations 
from the ordinary mode of expression, there are just about a dozen 
figures of rhetoric whose nature and use are worth studying. The 
others are common turnings and windings in language, in which 
nobody ever makes a mistake ; but which, closely regarded, are 
made out to be figures, and dubbed with hard Greek names, the 
knowledge of which is of no possible use. Hence Butler's famous 
couplet , 

" For all a rhetorician's rules 
Teach nothing but to name his tools." 

Of these dozen figures, the most common are the metaphor and 
the SIMILE. Definitions are hard, and sometimes very unsatisfac- 
tory; but when I say that the sentence " Doctor Johnson was a 
gnarled oak" contains a metaphor, and that the sentence "Doctor 
Johnson was like a gnarled oak " contains a simile, you will see 
at once what both are. "He is a lion," contains a metaphor; 
" he is like a lion " contains a simile. The metaphor is sometimes 
called an abridged simile, for it is putting one thing for another 
which it resembles, instead of saying it is like it. The simile is 
always introduced by the words like, or so, or words of similar 
import. "Charity, like the sun, brightens all it shines upon. A 
metaphor, like a beam of light, brightens and enlivens its object 
whenever it is used." When somebody cried out at the battle of 
Quebec, "They fly! they fly!" and General Wolff asked, "Who 
fly?" both used a figure; for men can only flee, not fly. When a 
little boy calls out, ' ' Look at that frog ! I will let this stone fly at 
hisliead!" he uses a figure; so that, long before he knows what 
metaphors are, he learns to use them rightly enough. Look at 
Coleridge's sentences about Cobbett, on page 210 of the Life, and 
you will find quite a number of metaphors. 

There is another figure, called metonymy, which looks, at first 
sight, like the metaphor; but which, on closer inspection, will be 
found to be essentially different. While the metaphor is really a 
departure from the ordinary form of speech, metonjrmy, which is 
termed a change of names, is one of the most ordinary expressions. 
"The kettle boils; the lamp burns; he smokes his pipe." Now, is 



and on 'Figurative Language. 223 

it the kettle that boils, or the \i3ater in it? the lamip that burns, or 
the oil? We use these expressions without ever thinking that we 
are using figurative language , for it is not a departure from the 
ordinary form of speech; it is everyday speech, everyday and 
common language. But, when we say, "Experience is the lamp 
by which my feet are guided;" or "We shall never liglit the pipe 
of peace until our rights are restored ; " or " This was the rock on 
which he split;" the language rises at once in force and impress- 
iveness, and we feel that there is a deviation from the common 
mode of expression. The former is metonymy, and the latter 
metaphor. "He is fond of his bottle; he drank three glasses; he 
keeps a good table ;" these, you see, are merely a change of names. 
' ' The gin-palace is the recruiting-shop for the penitentiary ; Senator 
Conkling sawed oif the limb on which he sat ; the politicians are 
hungry for ofiice, for they have been fasting for twenty years;" 
these are metaphors, and you see they convey a picture to the 
mind which no other words can convey so well. 

An ALLEGORY is a sort of continued metaphor, by which an 
imaginary history with a veiled meaning may be told. Macaulay 
says Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is the finest allegory which has 
been produced in two thousand years. For another fine example, 
see 80th Psalm. 

Peesonification is the giving of life to inanimate things, or the 
giving of speech and reason to objects, insects, and animals, as in 
fables. Cobbett's story of the quarrel in the pot-shop has good 
examples of this figure. To personify is to speak, for instance, of 
winter and war as of a man ; of spring and peace as of a woman. 
" Lo! steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears!" 

" How sleep the brave, who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest 1 
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
Keturns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod." 

There is another form of personification, a lower form, in which 
we give the qualities of beings to inanimate objects : we sometimes 
speak of a raging storm, a cruel disease, a remorseless sword, a 
scornful lip, a dying lamp, the smiling harvest, the thirsty ground, 
& fearless pen, the babbling brook. 

Synecdoche is taking a part for the whole, or the whole for a 
part; as, He has a keen eye; he has seen eighty winters; all the 
world runs after him. 

Inteebogation is asking a question which does not need aa 



224 On Putting Sentences Together, 

answer ; as, Can any man count the stars ? Will not the Judge of 
all the earth do right ? This is a favorite figure in oratory. 

Exclamation Is the uttering of some expression of surprise, or o£ 
some emotion of the mind; as. What a piece of work is man! how 
noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties! Woxild that some good 
angel had put Cobbett's grammar into that boy's hands ! 

Ikony is saying the opposite of what one means; as, Cobbett 
was remarkable for his meekness and humility ! John Bull's Ad- 
dress to Brother Jonathan (par. 214) is a good example. See also 
page 193 of the Life. Here is another example : 

" So goes the world ;— if wealthy, you may call 
This, friend ; that, brother ;— friends and brothers all. 
Though you are worthless, witless ; never mind it : 
You may have been a stable-boy— what then? 
'Tis wealth, good sir, makes Jwnorable men.'''' 

Antithesis is the comparing or placing in contrast of opposite 
qualities ; as, Though poor, yet proud ; though submissive, gay. 
The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs himself. Antithesis is 
closely allied to epigram, which is a short, pithy saying; as. 
When you have nothing to say, say it. Wendell Phillips is noted 
for his epigrammatic style. 

Hyperbole is some extravagant expression, employed to heighten 
the impression conveyed. Macbeth says that the great ocean will 
not wash his hand clean from the blood-stains on it, but that his 
hand will rather incarnadine the great ocean ; while Lady Macbeth 
says that "all the sweets of Arabia will not sweeten this little 
hand." Antony's declaration that if he were an orator like 
Brutus, he would "make the stones of Rome rise in mutiny," is 
another good example. " Rivers of waters run down mine eyes," 
IS the Psalmist's fine figure. 

Apostrophe is a sudden turning off from the subject of dis- 
course to address some absent or dead person or thing as present. 
When the news of Lord Byron's death came to England, John Jay, 
the famous preacher, spoke of him and his works in his pulpit; 
then he suddenly turned and addressed him as if he were present : 
"O Byron, liadst thou listened to the words of soberness and 
truth; hadst thou followed the counsels of the wise and good; 
hadst thou repressed thy passions, formed nobler aims and pursued 
a nobler ideal of life, what a different tale we would have had to 
tell ! what a different example, for all generations, thy life would 
have afforded!" His apostrophe was something like this; it is 
twenty-five years since I read it , I give it as I remember it ; I 



and on Figurative Language. 225 

only knoAV it made a deep impression on me at the time. And 
Byron himself, in his wonderful Childe Harold, gives us perhaps 
the fines't apostrophe in our language. He is speaking of the 
ocean, when he suddenly turns and addresses it in those noble 
lines beginning : 

'° KoU on, thou deep and dark blue ocean— roll 1 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. 

Man marks the earth with ruin— his control 

Stops with the shore." 

Climax is rising from one point to another till the highest 
is reached, or descending from one point to another till the 
lowest is reached. I have read somewhere this capital example, 
which is said to be from a sermon on Christian progress by a 
negro preacher : "If you cannot fly, run ; if you cannot run, walk ; 
if you cannot walk, crawl ; if you cannot crawl, worm it along!" 

Alliteration is the repeating of the same letter at the beginning 
of each of two or more words in the same line or sentence. One of 
the characters in Shakespeare's Henry VIII speaks thus of Cardinal 
Woolsey : 

" Begot of butchers and by butchers bred, 
How high his highness holds his haughty head." 

Besides these, there are figures of etymology and figures of 
SYNTAX. The former are hardly worth mentioning, being simply 
such changes in words as o'er for over, tho' for though, 'gainst for 
against, ^tis for it is, withouten for without, enchain for chain, and a 
few similar ones, all of which are called by the hardest of Greek 
names. These figures are simply deviations from the usual orthog- 
raphy of words, and are sometimes called figures of orthography. 
The figures of syntax are four in number: ellipsis, pleonasm, 
ENALLAGE, and HYPEEBATON. The first, which has already been 
explained, consists, you will remember, in leaving understood 
some word or words; as, "This is the man I mean," instead of 
"whom I mean." Pleonasm is the opposite of this; that is, the 
using of superfluous words ; and the most common example of it 
is in the use of the word got. "What have you got? I have got 
a book; you have got a horse." These ^'f^s may all be left out. 
The Bible is fuU of this figure, as indeed of all figures ; as, "There 
shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown 
down. Oh ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth ! " 
Enallage may be said to be the name given to the grammatical 
mistakes which the poets are allowed to make, on account of the 
shackles in which they are obliged to walk. In Leigh Hunt's 
poem, " The Glove and the Lions," occur these lines; 
10* 



22G 0)1 Putting Sentences Together, 

" De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous, lively dame, 
With dark bright eyes, which always seemed the same." 

Now, according to the rules of grammar, these lines declare that 
the king was a beauteous, lively dame ; but the poet Was obliged 
to write thus for the sake of the rhyme. This is called enallage. 
Milton's "Beelzebub than whom" may also be called enallage. 
Hyperbaton is somewhat similar to inversion, which latter con- 
sists in placing the predicate or the object before the subject; as. 
In came the king ; down fell the supplicant ; him I adore. Inver- 
sion is used to give force and emphasis to an expression; but 
hyperbaton is simply the transposition of a word or words for the 
sake of the measure; as, "While its song rolls the woods along," 
instead of "While its song rolls along the woods." 

There is no better example of an awkward blunder in the use of 
figures than that of the man who prayed that " the word which had 
been preached might be like a nail driven in a sure place, sending 
its roots downward and its branches upward, spreading itself like a 
green bay-tree, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an 
army with banners ! " A wonderful nail, indeed, this would be. 
Lord Cockburn, in his Memoirs, tells of a man who, on being asked 
at a public dinner to give a toast, exclaimed : ' ' Here's to the moon, 
shining on the calm bosom of a lake ! " The man thought, no 
doubt, that he was saying something figurative and fine. Franklin, 
in a toast he gave at a diplomatic dinner at Versailles, made use of 
the sun and moon in a very different manner. The British minister 
began with : ' ' George III, who, like the sun in his meridian, spreads 
a luster throughout and enlightens the world. " The French minister 
followed with : "Louis XVI, who, like the moon, sheds his mild and 
benignant rays on and influences the globe." Then our American 
Franklin gave : ' ' George Washington, commander of the American 
army, who, like Joshua of old, commanded the sun and the moon 
to stand still, and they obeyed him ! " Never were simile and meta- 
phor more happily combined. 

I cannot help thinking that, when Cobbett called figures double- 
edged tools, he had in mind the mischief which some of his own 
figures had played with himself on certain occasions. His likening 
of Doctor Rush to Doctor Sangrado cost him $5,000 ; his declara- 
tion that the appointment of Lord Hardwicke to the vice-royalty of 
Ireland was ' ' putting the surgeon's apprentice to bleeding the hos- 
pital patients," cost him £500 ; and his comparison of Castlereagh's 
discipline of British troops to Napoleon's discipline of his con- 
scripts, cost him £1,000 and an imprisonment of two years. Dog- 



and on Figurative JLanguage. 227 

berry found comparisons "odorous;" Cobbett found them very 
expensive and very injm-ious. Defoe's figures served Mm even still 
worse ; for his sarcastic irony in " The Shortest Way with the Dis- 
senters" cost liim his ears, exposure in the pillory, and the loss 
of his liberty for two years. The remorseless metaphor which 
Brougham applied to Canning, that he was guilty of the "most 
monstrous tergiversation [shuffling, shifting, twisting, turning] for 
office," caused that statesman, it is said, to take to his bed, and 
never to rise from it. 

VERSIFICATION. 

Now comes that mysterious matter, which I promised, at the 
beginning of the book, to give you an account of, versification. 
I said it is a simple matter ; so it is ; and yet many persons look 
upon it as something very complicated, far too difficult for com- 
mon people to learn, and never studied by anybody but poets. 

Verse is of two kinds, rhyme and blank verse. Rhyme con- 
sists of measured lines, every two of which ending with words or 
syllables of a similar sound; blank verse consists of lines with 
measure but no rhyme. Shakespeare's tragedies and Milton's 
Paradise Lost are in blank verse ; Butler's Hudibras and Pope's 
translation of the Iliad — indeed almost all Pope's poems — are in 
rhyme. Blank verse gives the poet much more freedom and ease 
in the expression of his thoughts than rhyme ; consequently our 
noblest poetry is in this form. 

Although there are many kinds of measure or meter, there are 
rarely to be found in English poetry more than four kinds. These 
four are: the iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic measures; 
all hard names, but meaning easy things. Now, what makes these 
measures easy to learn is, that they go in pairs, and each one in 
each pair is the contrary or the opposite of the other. 

Each line of poetry consists of a certain number of feet — and 
you may have them from one foot up to ten feet — and each foot 
consists of either two or three syllables. A foot in iambic measure 
is called an iambus ; in trochaic measure, a trochee ; in anapestic 
measure, an anapest; in dactylic measure, a dactyl. Now the 
iambus and the trochee are feet of two syllables, and the anapest 
and the dactyl are feet of three syllables. The two syllables of the 
iambus are short-long ; as, re-call', at-tend'. The two syllables of 
the trochee are long-short; as, ho'-ly, cy'-press. Therefore you 
see that the one is the opposite of the other. Counting the feet in 
a line of poetry, or pausing after each foot as you go along, is 



S28 On Putting Sentences Together., 

called scanning. Now scan me the foUcJwing verse, and tell me 
whether it is in iambic or trochaic measure : 

The cur | few tolls | the knell | of part | ing day ; 

The low I ing herd | winds slow | ly o'er | the lea ; 
The plough | man home | ward plods | his wea | ry way, 

And leaves | the world | to dark | ness and | to me. 

Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 

Now tell me if the following stanza is in the same measure • 

Once up I on a I mid-night 1 drea-ry, 

While 1 1 pon-der'd | weak and | wea-ry, 

O-ver I many a | quaint and | cu-rious | vol-ume 

Of for 1 got-ten | lore, 

While 1 1 nod-ded | near-ly | nap-ping, 

Sud-den | ly there I came a | tap-ping, 

As of I some one | gent-ly | rap-ping, 

Rap-ping | at my | cham-ber | door.— Poe's Haven, 

You see that in the first stanza the tone falls always on the second 
syllable, while in the second the tone falls always on the first. 
The first stanza, therefore, is in the iambic measure, and the second 
in the trochaic. 

Now the other two measures are also opposites. Mark the fol- 
lowing verse, and tell me whether it is made up of short-short-long 
feet (anapestic), or long-short-short feet (dactylic) : 

The As-syr | ian came down | like the wolf | on the fold. 
And his co | horts were gleam | ing in pur | pie and gold ; 
And the sheen | of their spears | was like stars | on the sea 
When the blue | wave rolls night | ly on deep | Ga-li-lee. 

Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib. 

Now observe that the feet in the following verse are the opposite 
or the reverse of the preceding : 

Bird of the | wil-der-ness. 

Blithe-some and | cum-ber-less. 
Sweet be thy | ma-tin o'er | moor-land and | lea 1 

Em-blem of | hap-pi-ness. 

Blest is thy | dwell-ing place— 
Oh to a I bide in the | des-ert with | thee I 

The Lark, by James Hogg. 

The first of these last two stanzas is, therefore, in anapestic 
measure, and the second in dactylic. So that the foiu* verses 
represent the iambic, the trochaic, the anapestic, and the dactylic 
measure; and you should learn all foiir by heart, as a guide in 
enabling you to determine the measure of other poems. Some- 
thing that will help you to remember the dactylic measure is the 
derivation of the word dactyl, which is a Greek word signifying 



and on Figurative Language. 229 

finger. Now look at your forefinger, and see if it does not con- 
sist of one long joint and two short ones (cum'ber-less). So that I 
may say — although it sounds like an Irish hull — that this, foot is so 
called because it is like & finger. 

Of all the poems in the English language, nine out of ten are in 
the iambic measure, which is no doubt because that measure is 
most suited to the nature of our language. Poor Lord Surrey — 
who seems to have been a noble, chivalric character, something 
like Sidney; beheaded in the flower of his age by the brutal 
Henry VIII. — was the first to write in this measure. Nearly all 
our dramatic and epic poetry, in fact nearly all our great poems, 
are in this measure. All Shakespeare's blank- verse plays, Milton's 
Paradise Lost, Pope's Homer, Spenser's Faery Queene, Butler's 
Hudibras, and Bryant's Thanatopsis are in iambic measure. There 
is only one thing more to be said, and that is, that you will some- 
times find a mixture of these various measures in one and the same 
poem ; but some one measure is, however, usually so predominant 
as to give a character to the verse. Verse means poetry in gen- 
eral, but one single line of poetry is also called a verse. 



230 Six Lessons. 



THE SIX LESSONS. 



LETTEK XXIV. 

SIX LESSONS, INTENDED TO PEEVENT STATESMEN FKOM USING 
FALSE GEAMMAK, AND FEOM WEITING IN AN AWKWAED MANNER. 

Harpenden, Hertfordshire, June 23, 1822. 

My deae James: 

In my first Letter, I observed that it was of the great- 
est importance that statesmen, above all others, should 
be able to write well. It happens, however, but too fre- 
quently, that that which should be, in this case as well as 
in others, is not ; sufficient proof of which you will find 
in the remarks which I am now about to make. The 
Letter to Tierney — a thing which I foresaw would become 
of great and lasting importance ; a thing to which I knew 
I should frequently have to recur with satisfaction — I 
wrote on the anniversary of the day on which, in the year 
1810, I was sentenced to be imprisoned for two years, to 
pay a fine of a thousand pounds, and to be held in bonds 
of five thousand pounds for seven years, for having pub- 
licly, and in print, expressed my indignation at the flog- 
ging of English local-militia men in the town of Ely, 
under a guard of German soldiers. I thought of this at 
a time when I saw those events approaching which I was 
certain would, by fulfilling my predictions, bring me a 
compensation for the unmerited sufferings and insults 
heaped upon me with so unsparing a hand. For writing 
the present little work, I select the anniversary of a day 
which your excellent conduct makes me regard as amongst 
the most blessed in the calendar. Who, but myself, can 
imagine what I felt when I left you behind me at New 



Introduction. 231 

York! Let this teJl my persecutors that you have made 
me more than amends for all the losses, all the fatigue, 
all the dangers, and all the anxieties attending that exile 
of which their baseness and injustice were the cause. 

The bad writing, on which I am about to remark, I do 
not pretend to look on as the cause of the present public 
calamities, or of any part of them ; but it is a proof of a 
deficiency in that sort of talent which appears to me to 
be necessary in men intrusted with great affairs. He who 
writes badly thinks badly. Confusedness in words can 
proceed from nothing but confusedness in the thoughts 
which give rise to them. These things may be of trifling 
importance when the actors move in private life; but 
when the happiness of millions of men is at stake, they 
ai'e of an importance not easily to be described. 

The pieces of wiitiag that I am about to comment on I 
deem bad writing; and, as you will see, the writmg may 
be bad, though there may be no grammatical error in it. 
The best writing is that which is best calculated to secure 
the object of the Avriter; and the worst, that which is the 
least likely to effect that purpose. But it is not in this 
extended sense of the words that I am now going to con- 
sider any writing. I am merely about to give specimens 
of badly- written papers, as a warning to the statesmen of 
the present day ; and as proofs, in addition to those which 
you have akeady seen, that we ought not to conclude that 
a man has great abilities merely because he receives great 
sums of the pubhc money. 

The specimens, that I shall give, consist of papers that 
relate to measures and events of the very first importance. 
The first is the speech of the Speaker of the House of 
Commons to the regent, at the close of the first session 
of 1819, during which Mr. Peel's, or the Cash-Payment, 
Bill had been passed; the second is the answer of the 
regent to that speech ; the first is the work of the House ; 
the second that of the ministry. 



232 Six Lessons. 

In Letter XII, I gave the reasons why we had a right to 
expect perfection in writings of this description. I there 
described the persons to whom the business of writing 
king's speeches belongs. The Speaker of the House of 
Commons is to be taken as the man of the greatest talent 
in that House. He is called the "First Commoner of 
England." Figure to yourself, then, the king on his 
throne, in the House of Lords; the lords standing in 
their robes; the Commons coming to the bar, with the 
Speaker at their head, gorgeously attired, with the mace 
held beside him; figure this scene to yourself, and you 
Avill almost think it sedition and blasphemy to suppose 
it possible that the speech made to the king, or. that his 
majesty's answer, both prepared and written down long 
beforehand, should be anything short of perfection. 
Follow me, then, my dear son, through this Letter ; and 
you will see that we are not to judge of men's talents by 
the di'esses they wear, by the offices they fill, or by the 
power they possess. 

After these two papers, I shall take some papers written 
by Lord Castlereagh, by the Duke of Wellington, and by 
the Marquis Wellesley. These are three of those persons 
who have, of late years, made the greatest figure in our 
affairs with foreign nations. The transactions which have 
been committed to their management have been such as 
were hardly ever exceeded in point of magnitude, whether 
we look at the transactions themselves or at their natural 
consequences. How much more fit than other men they 
were to be thus confided in ; how much more fit to have 
the interest and honor of a great nation committed to 
their hands, you will be able to judge when you shall 
have read my remarks on those of their papers to which 
I have here alluded. 

In the making of my comments, I shall insert the several 
papers, a paragraph or two, or more, at a time; and I 
shall number the paragraphs for the purpose of more 
easy reference. 



8peaker''s Speech. 233 



LESSON I. 

JRemarJcs on the Speech of the Speaker of the House of 
Commons to the Prince Regent, lohich Speech was 
made at the close of the first Session of 1819, during 
lohich Session PeeVs Bill was passed. 

" May it please your Royal Highness, 

1. " We, liis Majesty's faitliful Commons of the United Kingdom 
of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled, attend your 
Royal Highness with our concluding Bill of Supply. 

2. "The subjects which have occupied our attention have been 
more numerous, more various and more important, than are usually 
submitted to the consideration of Parliament in the same Session." 

It is difficult to say what is meant, in Paragraph, No. 2, 
by the word various. The Speaker had akeady said that 
the subjects were more numerous, which was quite enough ; 
for they necessarily differed from each other, or they were 
one and the same ; and, therefore, the word various can 
in this place have no meaning at all, unless it mean that 
the subjects were variegated in themselves, which would 
be only one degree above sheer nonsense. 

Next comes the " than are,''^ without a nominative case. 
Chambermaids, indeed, write in this way, and, in such a 
case, "the dear unintelligible scrawl " is, as the young rake 
says in the play, "ten thousands times more charming'* 
than correct writing ; but from a Speaker in his robes we 
might have expected "than those which are usually sub- 
mitted." 

And what does the Speaker mean by "in the same 
Session ? " He may mean " in one and the same Session ; " 
but what business had the word same there at all? Could 
he not have said, "dtu-ing ooie Session," or "during a 
single Session?" 

3. " Upon many of these subjects we have been engaged in long" 
and unwearied examinations; but such has been the pressure of 



234 Six Lessons. 

other business, and particularly of that which ordinarily belongs 
to a first Session of Parliament — and such the magnitude and 
intricacy of many of those inquiries^ that the limits of the present 
Session have not allowed of bringing them to a close." 

There is bad taste, at least, in using the word examin- 
ations in one part of the sentence, and the word inquiries 
in the other part, especially as the pronoun those was 
used in the latter case. The verb "has" agrees in num- 
ber with the noun '■'pressure ; " but the Speaker, notwith- 
standing the aid of his wig, was not able to perceive that 
the same verb did not agree in number with the nouns 
" magnitude and intricacy." " Such has been the pressure, 
and such have been the magnitude and intricacy." 

4. "But, Sir, of those measures which we have completed, the 
most prominent, the most important, and, as we trust, in their 
consequences, the most beneficial to the public, are the measures 
which have grown out of the consideration of the present state of 
the country — both in its currency and its finances." 

There is not here any positive error in grammar ; but 
there is something a great deal worse ; namely, unintelli- 
gible words. The epithet '•'■prominent " was wholly unnec- 
essary, and only served to inflate the sentence. It would 
have been prudent not to anticipate, in so marked a 
manner, beneficial consequences from Peel's Bill; but 
what are we to understand from the latter pai't of the 
sentence"? Here ai-e measures growing out of the con- 
sideration of the state of the country in its currency and 
finances. What ! The state of the country in its currency? 
Or is it the consideration in its currency'? And what had 
the word both to do there at all? The Speaker meant 
that the measures had grown out of, or, which would have 
been much more dignified, had been the result of a con- 
sideration of the present state of the country, with regard 
to its currency as well as with regard to its finances. 

5. "Early, Sir, in the present Session, we instituted an inquiry 
into the effects produced on the exchanges with foreign countries, 



Speaker s Speech. 235 

and the state of the circulating medium, by the restriction on 
payments in cash by the Bank. This inquiry was most anxiously 
and most deliberately conducted, and in its result led to the conclusion 
that it was most desirable, quickly, but with due precautions, to 
return to our ancient and healthful state of currency: — TAaf what- 
ever might have been the expediency of the Acts for the suspension 
of payments of cash at the different periods at which they were 
enacted (and doubtless they were expedient), whilst the country was 
involved in the most expensive contest that ever weighed down 
the finances of any country — still that, the necessity for the con- 
tinuance of these Acts having ceased, it became us with as little 
delay as possible (avoiding carefully the coniiuMon of too rapid a 
transition) to return to our ancient system; and that, if at any 
period, and under any circumstances, this return could be effected 
without national inconvenience, it was at the present, when this 
mighty nation, with a proud retrospect of the past, after having 
made the greatest efforts, and achieved the noblest objects, was 
now reposing in a confident, and, as vfQ fondly hope, a well-founded 
expectation of a sound and lasting peace." 

Here, at the beginning of this long and most confused 
paragraph, are two sentences, perfect rivals in all respects ; 
each has 37 words in it; each has three blunders; and 
the one is just as obscure as the other. To ^'■institute'" is 
to settle, to Jix, to erect, to establish; and not to set about 
or undertake, which was what was done here. If I were 
to tell you that I have instituted an inquiry into the quah- 
ties of the Speaker's speech, you would, though I am your 
father, be almost warranted in calling me an egregious 
coxcomb. But what are we to make of the ^^and the"" 
further on ? Does the Speaker mean that they instituted 
(since he will have it so) an inquiry into the state of the 
cii'culating medium, or into the effects produced on the 
cu'culating medium by the cash suspension? I defy any 
man living to say which of the two is meant by his words. 
And then we come to " by the Bank ; " and here the only 
possible meaning of the words is, that the restriction was 
imposed by the JBank^ whereas the Speaker means the 
restriction on payments made at the Bank. If at, instead 



236 Six Lessons. 

of by, had happened to drop out of the wig, this part of 
the sentence would have been free from error. 

As to the second sentence in this Paragraph No. 5, I 
may first observe on the incongruity of the Speaker's two 
superlative adverbs. Anxiously means with inquietude; 
and deliberately means coolly, slowly, warily, and the like. 
The first implies a disturbed, the latter a tranquil, state 
of the mind ; and a mixture of these it was, it appears, 
that produced Peel's Bill; this mixture it was which '■'•in 
its residts, LED to the conclusion;'''' that is to say, the 
result led to the result; result being conclusion, and con- 
clusion being result. But tautology is, you see, a favorite 
with this son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, more 
proofs of which you have yet to witness. And why must 
the king be compelled to hear the phrase " healthful state 
of the ciuTency," threadbare as it had long before been 
worn by Hoknek and all his tribe of coxcombs of the Edin- 
burgh Review"? Would not '■^our ancient currency''"' have 
answered every purpose *? And would it not have better 
become the lips of a person in the high station of Speaker 
of the House of Commons ? 

The remaining part of this paragraph is such a mass of 
confusion that one hardly knows where or how to begin 
upon it. The " that " after the colooi and the dash seems 
to connect it with what has gone before ; and yet what 
connection is there? Immediately after this '■'■thaV 
begins a parenthetical phrase, which is interrupted by a 
parenthesis, and then the parenthetical phrase goes on 
again till it comes to a dash, after which you come to the 
words that join themselves to the first '•'■that.''' These 
words are " still thaty Then, on goes the parenthetical 
phrase agaia till you come to "^^ became usy Then 
comes more parenthetical matter and another parenthesis ; 
and then comes " to return to our ancient systemP Take 
out all the parenthetical matter, and the paragraph will 
stand thus: "That it was desirable to return to our 



Speaker's Speech. 237 

aBcient and healthful state of currency : — that — still that, 
it became us to return to our ancient system." 

But only think of saying "whatever might have been 
the expediency of the acts ; " and then to make a paren- 
thesis directly afterwards for the express purpose of posi- 
tively asserting that they " were expedient "/ Only think 
of the necessity for the continuance of the acts having 
ceased, and of its being becoming in the Parliament to 
return to cash payments as soo?i as possible, and yet that 
a convulsion was to be apprehended from a too rapid 
transition ; that is to say, from returning to cash payments 
sooner than possible / 

After this comes a doubt whether the thing can be done 
at all ; for we are told that the Parliament, in its wisdom, 
concluded that, if " at any period this return could be 
effected without national inconvenience, it vms at the 
present."" And then follows that piece of sublime non- 
sense about the nation's reposing in the fond (that is, 
foolish) hope of, not only a lasting, but also a sound, 
p>3ace. A lastirig peace would have been enough for a 
common man ; but the son of an Archbishop must have it 
sound as well as lasting, or else he would not give a far- 
thing for it. 

6. " lu considering, Sir, the state of our finances, and in minutely 
comparing our income with our expenditure, it appeared to us that 
the excess of our income was not fairly adequate for the purposes to 
winch it was applicable — the gradual reduction of the national debt. 

7. 'It appeared to us tliat a clear available surplus of at least five 
millions ought to be set apart for that object. 

8. *'This, Sir, has been effected by the additional imposition of 
three millions of taxes." 

The word "■fairlg,"'' in Paragraph No. 6, is a redun- 
dancy; it is mere slang. "Adequate /'or'' ought to be 
"adequate ^o/" and ^'- applicable^' is inapplicable to the 
case ; for the money was applicable to any purpose. It 
should have been, " the purpose (and not the purposes) 



238 Six Lessons. 

for which it was intended;'''' or, "the purpose to which 
it was intended to be applied." 

The 7th Paragraph is a heap of redundant Treasury- 
slang. Here we have surplus; that is to say, an over- 
quantity; but this is not enough for the Speaker, who 
must have it clem^ also ; and not only clear, but available; 
and then he must have it set apart into the bargain! 
Leave out all the words in italics, and put purpose instead 
of object at the end; and then you have something like 
common sense as to the words, but still foolish enough as 
to the political view of the matter. 

Even the 8th Paragraph, a simple sentence of fourteen 
words, could not be free from fault. What does the 
Speaker mean by an " additional imposition " ? Did he 
imagine that the king would be fool enough to believe 
that the Parliament had imposed three millions of taxes 
without making an addition to former impositions 1 How 
was the imposition to be other than " additional ? " Why, 
therefore, cram in this word? 

9. "Sir, in adopting this course, his Majesty's faithful Commons 
did not conceal frmn tTiemselves that they were calling upon the 
nation for a great exertion : but well knowing that honor, and cfMV- 
acter^ and independence have at all times been the first and dearest 
objects of the hearts of Englishmen, we felt assured that there was 
no dijHiculty that the country could not encounter, and no pressure 
to which she would not willingly and cheerfully submit, to enable 
her to maintain, pure and unimpaired, that which lias never yet been 
shaken or sullied — her public credit and her national good faith." 

This is a sentence which might challenge the world! 
Here is, in a small compass, almost every fault that vn^iting" 
can have. The phrase ^'' conceal from themselves'''' is an 
importation from France, and from one of the worst manu- 
factories too. What is national '''•honor'''' but national 
''^character?'''' In what do they differ? And what had 
'■'■independence'''' to do in a case where the subject was the 
means of paying a debt ? Here are three things named as 



Speaker's Speech. 239 

the ^\first '' object of Englishmen's hearts. "Which was the 
^\/irst'" of the three? Or were they the ^/irst three? To 
^'■feel assured" is another French phrase. In the former 
pai't of the sentence, the Parliament are a they; in the 
latter part they are a we. But it is the figures of rhetoric 
which are the great beauties here. First it is English- 
7nen who have such a high sense of honor and character 
and indepeyidence. Next it is the country. And next the 
country becomes a sAey and in her character of female 
will submit to any '■'•pressure'''' to enable her to '■^main- 
tain " her purity; though scarcely anybody but the sons 
of Archbishops ever talk about maintaining purity, most 
people thinking that, in such a case, preserving is better. 
Here, however, we have pure and unimpaired. Now, pure 
applies to things liable to receive stains and adulterations ; 
unimpaired., to things liable to be undennined, dilapi- 
dated, demolished, or wor7i out. So the Speaker, in order 
to make sure of his mark, takes them both, and says that 
the thing which he is about to name, " has never yet been 
shaken or sullied''''! But what is this fine thing after all? 
Gad! there are tioo things; namely, "public, credit and 
national good faith." So that, leaving the word good to 
go to the long account of redundancy, here is another 
instance of vulgarly- false grammar; for the two nouns, 
joined by the conjunction, require the verb have instead 
of has. 

10. ' ' Thus, Sir, I have endeavored, shoi'tly, and I am aware how 
imperfectly, to notice the various duties which have devolved upon 
us, in one of the longest and most arduous sessions in the records 
of Parliament." 

11. "The Bill, Sir, which it is my duty to present to your Royal 
Highness, is entitled, 'An Act for applying certain monies therein 
mentioned for the Service of the year 1819, and for further appro- 
priating the supplies granted in this Session of Parliament.' To 
which, with all humility, we pray his majesty's royal assent." 

Even here, in these common-place sentences, there must 
be something stupidly illiterate. The Speaker does not 



2^40 /Six Wessons. 

mean that his " endeavor " was " shortly " made, or made 
in a short manner, but that his notice was made in a 
short manner ; and, therefore, it ought to have been, " to 
notice shortly" ii shortly \i must be; yet, surely phrase- 
ology less grovelling might have been used on such an 
occasion. "7?^ the longest session," and " in the records 
of Parliament," are colloquial, low and incorrect into the 
bargain; and as for "momes" in the last paragraph, the 
very sound of the word sends the mind to 'Change Alley, 
and conjures up before it all the noisy herd of Bulls and 
Bears. 

There is, indeed, one phrase in this whole Speech (that 
in which the Speaker acknowledges the imperfectness of 
the manner in which he has performed his task) which 
would receive our approbation; but the tenor of the 
speech, the at once flippant and pompous tone of it, the 
self-conceit that is manifest from the beginning to the end, 
forbid us to give him credit for sincerity when he con- 
fesses his deficiencies, and tell us that the confession is 
one of those clumsy traps so often used with the hope of 
catching unmerited applause. 



LESSON II. 

MemarJcs on the Speech which the Prince Regent made to 
the Parliament on the occasion when the above Speech 
of the Speaker was Tuade. 

"My Lords and Gentlemen : 

12. " It is with great regret that I am again obliged to announce 
to you the continuance of his Majesty's lamented indisposition. 

13. "I cannot close this session of Parliament without expressing 
the satisfaction that I have derived from the zeal and assiduity 
with which you have applied yourselves to the several important 
objects which have come under your consideration. 

14. ' ' Your patient and laborious investigation of the state of the 



King^s Speech. 241 

circulation and currency of the kingdom demands my warmest 
acknowledgment ; and I entertain a confident expectation that the 
measures adopted^ as tlie result of this inquiry, will be productive 
of the most beneficial consequences." 

The phrase pointed out by itahcs in the 12th Paragraph 
is amhigttous ; and, as it is wholly superfluous, it has no 
business there. The 13th Pai'agraph (for a wonder!) is 
free from fault ; but, in the 14th, why does the king make 
two of the " circulation and currency " f He means, doubt- 
less, to speak of the thing, or things, in use as money. 
This was the currency; and what, then, was the ^'■circu- 
lation " ? It is not only useless to employ words in this 
way ; it is a great deal worse ; for it creates a confusion 
of ideas in the mind of the reader. 

'•'■Investigation and inquiry " come nearly to each other 
in meaning ; but when the word " this," which had a direct 
application to what has gone before, was used, the word 
investigation ought to have followed it, and not the word 
inquiry; it being always a mark of great affectation and 
of false taste, when pains are taken to seek for synonymous 
words in order to avoid a repetition of sound. The device 
is seen through., and the littleness of mind exposed. 

^\xQfine word "■adopted'''' is not nearly so good as the 
plain word taken would have been. The Parliament did 
not adopt the measures in question ; they were their own; 
of their own invention; and, if I were here writing re- 
marks on the measures, instead of remarks on the lan- 
guage in which they were spoken of, we might have a 
hearty laugh at the '■'■confident expectation'''' which the 
king entertained of the '■'■most beneficial consequences " of 
those measures, which were certainly the most foolish 
and mischievous ever taken by any ParHament, or by any 
legislative assembly, in the world. 

" Gentlemen of the House of Commons: 

15. "1 thank you for the supplies which you have granted for 
the service of the present year. 
11 



242 Six Lessons. 

16. "I sincerely regret that the necessity should have existed of 
making any additions to the burthens of the people ; but I antici- 
pate the most important permanent advantages from the effort 
which you have th,us made for meeting at once all the financial 
difficulties of the country ; and I derive much satisfaxition from the 
belief that the means vphich you have devised for this purpose are 
calculated to press as lightly on all classes of the community as 
could be expected when so great an effort was to be made." 

Nobody, I presume, but kings say an " effort for meet- 
ing." Others say that they make an effort to meet. And 
nobody, that I ever heard of before, except bill-brokers, 
talks about meeting money demands. One cannot help 
admiring the satisfaction, nay, the '■'■much satisfaction'''^ 
that the king derived from the belief that the nev/ taxes 
would press as lightly as possible on all classes of the 
community. I do not like to call this vulgar nonsense, 
because, though written by the ministers, it is spoken by 
the king. But, what is itf The additional load m,ust 
fall upon somebody; upon some class or classes/ and 
where, then, was the sense of expressing " much satisfac- 
tion'''' that they would fall Ughtly on all classes? The 
words " as possible,^'' which come after likely, do nothing 
more than make an addition to the confusion of ideas. 

"My Loeds and Gentlemen : 

17. "I continue to receive from foreign powers the strongest 
assurances of their friendly disposition towards this country. 

18." ' ' I have observed with great concern the attempts which 
have recently been made in some of the manufacturing districts to 
take advantage of circumstances of local distress, to excite a spirit 
of disaffection to the institutions and government of the country. 
No object can be nearer my heart than to promote the welfare and 
prosperity of all classes of his majesty's subjects ; but this cannot 
be effected without the maintenance of public order and tran- 
quillity. 

18. ' ' You may rely, therefore, upon my firm determination to 
employ, for this purpose, the powers entrusted to me by law; and 
I have no doubt that, on your return to your several counties, you 
will use your utmost endeavors, in co-operating with the magis- 



King's Speech. 



243 



tracy, to defeat the machinations of those whose projects, if suc- 
cessful, could only aggravate the evils which it professed to remedy; 
and who, under the pretence of Reform, have really no other object 
hut the subversion of our happy Constitution." 

Weak minds, feeble writers and speakers, delight in 
superlatives. They have big sound in them, and give the 
appearance of force; but they very often betray those 
who use them into absurdities. The king, as in Paragraph 
No. 17, might continue to receive strong assurances ; but 
how could he receive 'Hhe strongest'' more than once? 

In the 18th Paragraph we have "welfare mid pros- 
yerity." I, for my part, shall be content with either (the 
two being the same thing), and if I find, from the acts of 
the government, reason to beheve that one is really sought 
for, I shall care little about the other. 

I am, however, I must confess, not greatly encouraged 
to hope for this, when I immediately afterwards hear of a 
"/rm determination " to employ ''powers;' the nature of 
which is but too well understood. ''Determination " can, 
in grammar, receive no additional force from having /r?7i 
placed before it; but, in political interpretation, the use 
of this word cannot fail to be looked upon as evincmg a 
little more of eagerness than one could wish to see ap- 
parent in such a case. • 

In these speeches, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs 
generally go, like crows and ravens, in pairs. Hence we 
have, in the 18th Paragraph, " the institutions and gov- 
ernment " of the country. Now, though there way he 
institutions of the country, which do not form a part of 
its government; the government is, at any rate, amongst 
the country's institutions. If every institution do not 
form a part of the government, the government certainly 
forms a part of the institutions. But as the old woman 
said by her goose and gander, these words have been a 
couple for so many, many years, that it would be a sin to 
part them just at the last. 



24 -i Six Lessons. 

The gross grammatical errors in the latter part of the 
last paragraph, where the singular pronoun it represents 
the plural noun projects, and the verb profess is in the 
past instead of the present time, one can account for only 
on the supposition that the idea of Reform had scared all 
the powers of thought from the minds of the writers. 
This unhappy absence of intellect seems to have con- 
tinued to the end of the piece; for here we have "no 
other object hut^'' instead of no other object than; and 
the word " really " put into the mouth of a king, and on 
such an occasion, is something so very lovj that we can 
hardly credit our eyes when we behold it. 

INTRODUCTION 

7'o the Four Lessons on the productions of Lord Castle- 
reagh, the DuJce of 'Wellington, the Marquis Wellesley, 
and the JBishop of Winchester. 

From the literary productions of Speakers and Minis- 
ters, I come to those of Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, 
Viceroys, and Sishops. In these persons, even more fully 
perhaps than in the former, we are entitled to expect 
proofs of great capacity , as writers. I shall give you 
specimens from the writings of four persons of this de- 
scription, and these four, men who have been intrusted 
with the management of affairs as ' important as any that 
the king of this coiintry ever had to commit to the hands 
of his servants : I mean Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of 
Wellington, the Marquis Wellesley, and the Bishop of 
Winchester; the first of whom has been called the greatest 
statesman, the second the greatest captain, the thiixl the 
greatest viceroy, the foTurth the greatest tutor, of the age. 

The passages which I shall first select from the writings 
of these persons are contained in state papers relating to 
the Museums at Paris. 



Introduction, Etc. 245 

And here, in order that you may be better able to judge 
of the writings themselves, I ought to explain to you the 
nature of the matters to which they relate, and the cir- 
cumstances under which they were written. The Museums 
at Paris contained, in the year 1815, when the King of 
France was escorted back to that city by the armies of 
the Allies, a great many statues and pictures, which Na- 
poleon had, in his divers conquests and invasions, taken 
from the collections of other countries, and carried to 
France. When, therefore, the Allies had, by theu* armies, 
possession of Paris, at the time just mentioned, they rifled 
these Museums, and took from them what had, or what 
they asserted had, belonged to the Allies respectively. 
The French contended that this was unjust, and that it 
was an act of pillage. They said, that, in 1814, when the 
Allies were also in possession of the capital of France, 
they put forward no claim to the things in question, 
which were, to all intents and purposes, military booty, 
or prize ; and that for the Allies to make this claim now, 
was not only contrary to their own precedent of 1814, 
but that it was to assume the character of enetnies of 
France, directly in the teeth of their own repeated declar- 
ations, in which they had called themselves friends and 
even Allies of France ; and in direct; violation of their 
solemn promises to commit against the French nation no 
act of hostility, and to treat it, in all respects, as a friend. 
The Allies had now, however, the^ower in their hands; 
and the result was the stripping of the Museums. 

To characterize this act committed by those who entered 
France under the name of the Allies of the king and of 
the great body of his people, and who took possession of 
Paris in virtue of a convention which stipulated for the 
security of all public property; to ■characterize such an 
act is unnecessary; but we cannot help lamenting that 
the Ministers of England'' were open abettors, if not orig- 
inal instigators, in this memorable transaction, which, of 



246 Six Lessons. 

all the transactions of that time, seems to have created 
the greatest portion of rancor in the minds of the people 
of France. 

That the English Ministers were the instigators appears 
pretty clearly from the seizure (which was by force of 
arms) having been immediately preceded by a paper 
(called a note) dehvered by Lord Castlereagh in the name 
of the Prince Kegent to the Ambassadors of the Alhes, 
which paper was dated 11th Sept., 1815, and from which 
paper I am now about to give you a specimen of the 
writing of this Secretary of State. 



LESSON III. 

Remarhs on Lord CastlereagJi's Note of the Wth Sep- 
tember, 1815, on the stihject of the Museums at Paris. 

This Note sets out by saying, that representations, on 
the subject of the Statues and Pictures, have been laid 
before the Ambassadors of the Allies, and that the writer 
had received the commands of the Prince Regent to 
submit, for the consideration of the Allies, that which 
follows. After some further matter, amongst which we 
find this "greatest statesman" tJVing of "the indulgen- 
cies " (instead of indulgences) to which the Erench had a 
right " to aspire " (instead of to hope for); after saying 
that the purity of the friendship of the AlHes had been 
" proved beyond a question " by their last year's conduct, 
and " still more,'''' that is to say, farther than beyond, by 
their this year's conduct; after talking about the '■'- sub- 
stantial integrity " of France, and thereby meaning that 
she was to be despoiled of only a part of her dominions ; 
after talking about " combining " this ^'^ integrity with such 
an adequate system of temporary precaution as may sat- 
isfy what the Allies oioe to the security of their own 



IjOfd CastlereagK s Note. 247 

subjects;" after all this, and a great deal more of the 
same description, we come to the paragraphs that I am 
now going to remark on. Observe, I continue the num- 
hering of the paragraphs, as if the whole of the papers on 
which I am commenting formed but one piece of writing. 

20. "Upon what principle can France, at the close of such a 
war, expect to sit down with tlie same extent of possessions which 
she held before the Revolution, and desire, at the same time, to 
retain the ornamental spoils of all other countries ? Is it that there 
can exist a doubt of the issue of the contest, or of the power of the 
Allies to effectuate what justice and policy require? If not, upon 
what principle deprive France of her late territorial acquisitions, 
and preserve to her the spoliations appertaining to those territories 
which all modern conquerers have invariably respected, as insepar- 
able from the country to which they belonged ? 

21 . " The Allied Sovereigns have perhaps something to atone for 
to Europe, in consequence of the course pursued by them, when 
at Paris, during the last year. It is true, they never did so far 
make themselves parties in the criminality of this mass of plunder 
as to sanction it by any stipulation in their treaties ; such a recog- 
nition has been on their part uniformly refused • but they certainly 
did use their influence to repress at that moment any agitation of 
their claims, in the hope that France, not less subdued by their 
generosity than by their arms, might be disposed to preserve 
inviolate a peace which had been studiously framed to serve as a 
bond of reconciliation between the nation and the king. They 
had also reason to expect that his Majesty would be advised volun- 
tarily to restore a considerable proportion, at least, of these spoils, 
to their lawful owners. 

22. "But the question is a very different one now, and to pursue 
the same course, under circumstances so essentially altered, would 
be, in the judgment of the Prince Regent, equally unwise towards 
France, and unjust towards our Allies, who have a direct interest 
in this question. 

23. "His Royal Highness, in stating this opinion,- feels it neces- 
sary to guard against the possibility of misrepresentation. 

24. "Whilst he deems it to be the duty of the Allied Sovereigns 
not only not to obstruct, but facilitate, upon the present occasion, 
the return of these objects to the places from whence they were torn, 
it seems not less consistent with tTieir delicacy not to suffer the 
position of their armies in France, or the removal of tJiese works 



248 Six Lessons. 

f i-om the Louvre, to become tlie means, either directly or indirectly, 
of bringing within their own dominions a single article which did 
not of right, at the period of tlmr conquest, belong either to their 
respective family collections, or to the countries over which they 
now actually reign. 

25. ' ' Whatever value the Prince Regent might attach to such 
exquisite specimens of the fine arts, if otherwise acquired, he has 
no loisli to iecome possessed of them at the expense of France, or 
rather of the countries to which they of a right belong, more espe- 
cially hy following up a principle in war which he considers as a 
reproach to the nation by which it has been adopted, and so far 
from wishing to take advantage of the occasion to purchase from 
the rightful owners any articles they might, from pecuniary con- 
siderations, be disposed to part with, his Royal Highness would, on 
the contrary, be disposed rather to afford the means of replacing 
them in those very temples and galleries of which they were so 
long the ornaments. 

26. ^'■Were it possible that his Royal Highness's sentiments 
towards the person and cause of Louis XVIII. could be brought 
into doubt, or that the position of his Most Christian Majesty was 
likely to be injured in the eyes of his own people, the Prince Regent 
would not come to this conclusion without the most painful re- 
luctance ; but, on the contrary, his Royal Highness believes that 
his Majesty will rise in the love and respect of his own subjects, 
in proportion as he separates himself from these remembrances of 
revolutionary warfare. These spoils, which impede a moral recon- 
ciliation between France and the countries she has invaded, are 
not necessary to record the exploits of her armies, which, notwith- 
standing the cause in which they were achieved, must ever make 
the arms of the nation respected abroad. But whilst these objects 
remain at Paris, constituting as it were the title-deeds of the coun- 
tries which have been given up, the sentim,ents of reuniting these 
countries again to France will never be altogether extinct; nor 
will the genius of the French people ever completely associate itself 
with the more limited existence assigned to the nation under the 
Bourbons." 

I shall say nothing of the logic of this passage; and 
I would fain pass over the real and poorly-disguised 
motive of the proceeding; but this must strike every 
observer. 

It is the mere writing, which, at present, is to be the 



Lord GastlereagK' s Note. 249 

principal object of our attention. To be sure, the senti- 
ments, the very thoughts, in Paragraphs 24 and 25, which 
sj)eak the soul, as they are conveyed in the language, of 
the sedentary and circumspect keeper of a huckster's 
stand, or the more sturdy perambulating bearer of a mis- 
cellaneous pack, do, with voice almost imperious, demand 
a portion of our notice ; while, with equal force, a similar 
claim is urged by the suspicions in the former of these 
paragraphs, and the protestations in the latter, which 
present to the nations of Europe, and especially to the 
French nation, such a captivating picture of English 
frankness and sincerity f 

But let us come to the writing; and here, in Paragraph 
20, we have spoliations appertaining to territories, though 
spoliation means the act of despoiling, and never does 
or can mean the thing of which one has been despoiled; 
and next, we have the word lohich, relating to spoliation, 
and then the subsequent part of the sentence tells us that 
spoliations have invariably been respected. 

In the 21st Paragraph, does the it relate to criminality 
or to mass of plimder? and what is meant by a sanction 
given to either? Could the writer suppose it possible 
that it was necessary to tell the Allies, themselves, that 
they had 7iot sanctioned such things? And here, if we 
may, for a moment, speak of the logic of our "greatest 
statesman," the Allies did sanction, not crhninality, not 
a mass of plunder, but the quiet possession of the speci- 
mens of art, by leaving, in 1814, that possession as they 
found it. At the close of this paragraph, we have a pro- 
portion, instead of apart, an error common enough with 
country fellows when they begin to talk fine, but one 
that surely ought to be absent from the most stately of 
the productions of a Secretary of State. 

"Unwise towards France, and unjust towards the 
Allies," and ^'■equally'''' too, is as pretty a specimen of 
what is called twattle as you will find ; while " the return " 
11* 



250 Six Lessons. 

of these '■'■objects^'' the not purloining of a '■'■single articled 
the not wishing to '■'■take advantage''^ and to '■'■purchase 
any of the articles that the owners might wish to part 
with,'''' form as fine an instance of the powers of the plume 
de crasse, or pen of tnud, as you will be able to hunt out 
of the history of a whole year's proceedings at the Police 
Ofl&ces. 

But, in Paragraph 24, we have "^^e^> conquest." The 
conquest of whom or tchatf That of the Allies, that of 
their dominions, or that of the "objects''''? It is impossi- 
ble to answer, except by guess ; but it comes out, at any 
rate, that there was a conquest; and this "greatest 
statesman " might have perceived that this one word was 
a complete answer to all his assertions about pltmder and 
spoliation ; for that which is conquered is held of right; 
and the only want of right in the Allies, forcibly to take 
these " articles," arose from their having entered France 
as Allies of the King of France, and not as enemies and 
conquerers. 

And what, in Paragraph 25, is meant by '^following up 
a principle in war''''? The phrase, "follow up a prin- 
ciple," is low as the dirt ; it is chit-chat, and very unfit to 
be used in a writing of this sort. But, as to the sense ; 
how could the regent, even if he had purchased the pic- 
tures, be said io follow up a principle "in war''''? The 
meaning, doubtless, was that the regent had no wish to 
become possessed of these things at the expense of 
France, or, rather, at the expense of the countries 
to which they belonged, especially as he could not 
thus gratify his taste for the arts without acting 
upon a principle which the French had acted on in 
war. This meaning might, indeed, be supposed to be 
contained in the above phrase of Lord Castlereagh; 
but in a writing of this kind, ought anything be left to 
supposition f 

The 26th Paragraph is an assemblage of all that is 



Lord GastlereagKs Note. 251 

incorrect, low, and ludicrous. The " vms " after Christian 
Majesty ought to be could he, that is, '■^loere it possible 
that his position could he likely to be injured ; " and not 
'■'•were it possible that his position was likely to be in- 
jured," which is downright nonsense. And then only 
think of an injured position- and of the king's position 
being injured " in the eyes " of his people ! " But, on the 
contrary y On the contrary of what? Look back, and 
see if it be possible to answer this question. Next comes 
the intolerable fustian of the king's '■'■ separating himself 
from rememhrances;^'' and from this flight, down the 
" greatest statesman " pitches, robs the attorney's office, 
and calls the statues and pictures '■'■title deeds, as it 
were;" and this "as it were'''' is, perhaps, the choicest 
phrase of the M'^hole passage. But, in conclusion (for it is 
time to have done with it), what do you say to " the senti- 
ments of re-uniting the countries to France"? And 
what do you say, then, to the " genius ^^ (that is, the dis- 
position) " of the French people associating itself with 
the limited existence assigned to the nation under the 
Bourbons"? What do you say of the man who could 
make use of these words, when his meaning was, " that, 
as long as these statues and pictures remained to remind 
the French people of the late extent of the dominions of 
France, their minds would not be completely reconciled 
to those more narrow limits, which had now been pre- 
scribed to her"? What do you say of the man who, 
having this plain proposition to state, could talk of the 
genius of the people associating itself with the more 
limited existence of the nation, the nation being the 
people; and therefore his meaning, if there can be any 
sense in the words, being, that the people as a nation had, 
under the Bourbons, had their existence, or length of life, 
abridged? What do you say, what can you say of such 
a man, but that nature might have made him for a valet, 
for a strolling player, and possibly for an auctioneer ; but 



252 Six Lessons. 

never for a Secretary of State! Yet this man was edu- 
cated at the JJjiiversity of Cambridge* 



LESSON IV. 

MemarJcs on a Dispatch of the Duke of 'Wellington 
{called the greatest Captain of the age) relative to the 
Museiums at Paris. 

Having, as far as relates to the Museums, taken a suffi- 
cient view of the writing of the greatest Statesman of the 
age, I now come to that of the '-'■ greatest Captain.'''' The 
writing that I am now about to notice relates to the same 
subject. The Captain was one of the Commanders at 
Paris, at the time above spoken of, and it is in that capa- 
city that he writes. But we ought to observe, here, that 
he is not only a great Captain, but a great Ambassador 
also; and that he was Ambassador at the Congress of 
Vienna just before the time we are speaking of ; and that 
• he was formerly Secretary of State for Ireland. 

The paper, from which I am about to make a quotation, 
is a " dispatch " from the " greatest Captain " to Lord 
Castlereagh, dated at Paris, 23rd September, 1815, soon 
after the museums had been rifled. 

I shall not take up much of your time with the per- 
formance of this gentleman ; a short specimen will suffice ; 

* This Lesson was written in June, 1822. On the 12th of August, 
1822, this same Lord Castlereagli (being still Secretary of State) 
killed himself at North Cray, in Kent, by cutting his throat. A 
Coroner's Jury pronounced him to have been insane; and, which is 
very curious, a letter from the Duke of Wellington was produced to 
prove that the deceased had been insane for some time. Though, 
mind, he had been for some time, and was when he cut his throat, 
actually entrusted with the care and powers of the two other Secre- 
taries' offices (they being absent), as well as those of the office of 
Foreign Affairs.' 



The Duhe of Wellington. 253 

and that shall consist of the first three paragraphs of his 

'■^dispatch.'''' 

"My dear Loed : 

27. ' ' There has been a good deed of discussion here lately respect- 
ing the measures which I have been under the necessity of adopt- 
ing, in order to get for the King of the Netherlands his pictures, 
etc., from the museums; and lest these reports sliould reacli the 
Prince Regent, I wish to trouble you, for liis Royal Highness's in- 
formation, "with the following statement of what has passed. 

28. ' ' Shortly after tlie arrival of the sovereigns at Paris, the 
minister of the King of the Netlierlands claimed the pictures, etc., 
belonging to liis sovereign, equally with tliose of other powers; and, 
as far as I could learn, never could get any satisfactory reply from 
the French government. After several conversations witli me, he 
addressed your lordship an official note, which was laid before the 
ministers of the allied sovereigns, assembled in conference; and 
the subject was taken into consideration repeatedly, with a view 
to discover a mode of doing justice to the claimants of the speci- 
mens of the arts in the museums, without injuring the feelings of 
the King of France. In the meantime the Prussians had obtained 
from his majesty not only all the really Prussian pictures, but 
those belonging to the Prussian territories on the left of the Rhine, 
and the pictures, etc., belonging to all the allies of his Prussian 
majesty; aM the subject pressed for an early decision; and jour 
lordship wrote your note of the 11th instant, in which it was fully 
discussed. 

29. "The ministers of the King of the Netherlands still having 
no satisfactory answer from the French government, appealed to 
me, as the general-in-chief of the army of the King of the Nether- 
lands, to know whether I had any objection to employ his majesty's 
troops to obtain possession of what was his undoubted property. 
I referred this application again to ' the ministers of the allied 
courts, and no objection having been stated, I considered it my duty 
to take the necessary measures to obtain what was his right." 

The great characteristic of this writing (if writing it 
ought to be called) is the thorough-paced vulgarity of it. 
There is a meanness of manner as well as of expression, 
and, indeed, a suitableness to the subject much too 
natural in all its appearances, to have been the effect 
of art. 



254 Six Lessons. 

The writer, though addi'essing a minister of state, and 
writing matter to be laid before a sovereign, begins ex- 
actly in the manner of a quidnunc talking to another that 
he has just met in the street. " There has been a good 
deal of discussion,^'' (that is to say, talk) " heref that is 
to say, at Paris, Castlereagh being, at the time, in London. 
The phrase "to get for'' is so very dignified that it could 
have come only from a great man, and could have been 
inspired by nothing short of the consciousness of being 
"iAe ally of all the nations of JEurope,'" as the writer 
calls himself in another part of this famous '■'■dispatch.'''' 

But what are " these reports,'" of which the great Cap- 
tain speaks in the latter part of this paragraph? He had 
spoken of no reports before. He had mentioned "dis- 
cussion,'" and a "-good deaV of it; but had said not a 
word about reports; and these reports pop out upon us 
like "these six men in buckram," in Falstaffs narrative 
to the Prince. 

The captain's " wishing to trouble " Lord Castlereagh, 
" for the regent's information," closes this paragraph in 
a very suitable manner, and prepares the mind for the 
next, where the regent would find trouble enough, if he 
were compelled to find out the English of it. The Dutch 
minister "cZazmec?the pictures belonging to his sovereign, 
equally with those of other powers!" What! did this 
Dutchman claim the whole : those belonging to the Dutch 
sovereign and those belonging to all the other powers 
besides "? This, to be sure, would have been in the true 
Dutch style; but this could hardly be the fact. If it 
were, no wonder that the duke had learned that the 
minister '•'■never could get any satisfactory reply;" for 
it must have been a deal indeed that would have satisfied 
him. 

The phrase "he addressed your lordship an official 
note " is in the counting-house style ; and then to say to 
Lord Castlereagh, " your lordship wrote your note of the 



The, Buhe of Wellington. 255 

11th of September," was so necessary, lest the latter 
should imagine that somebody else had written the note ! 
Nor are the four ands in this paragraph to be overlooked ; 
for never was this poor conjunction so worked before, 
except, perhaps, in some narrative of a little girl to her 
mother. 

The narrative is, in the last-quoted paragraph, continued 
with unrelaxed spirit. The Dutch minister can still ob- 
tain no satisfactory answer ; he asks the duke whether he 
has any objection to use force, and asserts, at the same 
time, that the goods in question are his master's ^^un- 
doubted property.'''' "Upon this the duke applies to the 
other ministers, and, " no objection having been stated,"" 
he considers it his duty to obtain " what was his right/'' 
that is to say, the Dutch king's right. 

Never was there surely a parcel of words before put 
together by anybody in so clumsy a manner. In a sub- 
sequent part of the ^^ dispatch,''' we have this: "I added, 
that I had no instructions regarding the museum, 7ior no 
grounds on which to form a judgment." In another place 
we have "the King of the iVe^AerZawc^'s pictures." In 
another place we have "that the property should be 
retvirned to their rightful owners." 

But, to bestow criticism on such a shocking abuse of 
letters is to disgrace it ; and nothing can apologize for 
what I have done but the existence of a general knowl- 
edge of the fact that the miserable stuff that I have 
quoted, and on which I have been remarking, proceeded 
from the pen of a man who has, on many occasions, had 
some of the most important of the nation's affairs com- 
mitted to his management. There is in the nonsense of 
Castlereagh a frivolity and a foppery that give it a sort 
of liveliness, and that now and then elicit a smile ; but in 
the productions of his correspondent there is nothing to 
relieve ; all is vulgar, all clumsy, all dull, all torpid inanity. 



256 /Six Lessons. 



LESSON V. 

Remarks on a Note presented by Lord Castlereagh to the 
Ambassadors of the Allies, at Paris, in July, 1815, 
relative to the slave trade. 

30. " Viscount Castleeeagh, his Britannic Majesty's principal 
Secretary of State, etc., in reference to the communication he has 
made to the conference of the orders addressed to the admiralty to 
suspend all hostilities against the coast of France, observes, that 
there is reason to foresee that French ship-owners might be induced 
to renew the slave trade, under the supposition of the peremptory 
and total abolition decreed by Napoleon Bonaparte having ceased 
with his power; that, nevertheless, great and powerful considera- 
tions, arising from motives of humanity and even regard for the 
king's authority, require that no time should be lost to maintain in 
France the entire and immediate abolition of the traffic in slaves ; 
that if, at the time of the Treaty of Paris, the king's administration 
could wish a final but gradual stop should be put to this trade, in 
the space of five years, for the purpose of affording the king the 
gratification of having consulted, as much as possible, the interests 
of the French proprietors in the colonies, now, that the absolute 
prohibition has been ordained, the question assumes entirely a dif- 
ferent shape, for if the king were to revoke the said prohibition, 
lie would give himself the disadvantage of authorizing , in the interior 
of France, the reproach Avliich more than once has been thrown out 
against his former government, of countenancing reactions, and, 
at the same time, justifying, out of France, and particularly in 
England, the belief of a systematic opposition to liberal ideas; that 
accordingly the time seems to have arrived when the Allies cannot 
hesitate formally to give weight in France to the immediate and 
entire prohibition of the slave trade, a prohibition, the necessity of 
which has been acknowledged, in principle, in the transactions of 
the Congress at Vienna." 

Now, I put this question to you : Do you understand 
'what this great statesman means? Read the note three 
times over, and then say whether you understand tohat 
he wants. You may guess/ but you can go little further. 
Here is a whole mass of grammatical errors ; but it is the 



Lord Castlereagh^s Note. 257 

obscurity, tlie loiiintelligibleness of the note, that I think 
constitutes its greatest fault. One way of proving the 
badness of this writing is to express the meaning of the 
writer in a clear manner ; thus : 

"Lord Castlereagh observes that there is reason to 
apprehend that the French ship-owners may be induced 
to renew the slave trade, from a supposition that the 
total abolition, recently decreed by Napoleon, has been 
nullified by the cessation of his authority ; that motives 
of humanity, as well as a desire to promote the establish- 
ment of the king's authority, suggest that no time should 
be lost in taking efficient measures to maintain the decree 
of abolition ; that at the time of the Treaty of Paris, the 
king's ministers wished to abolish this trade, but, in order 
that the king might, as much as possible, consult the 
interests of the colonial proprietors, those ministers 
wished the object to be accomplished by degrees during 
the space of five years ; that now, however, when the 
abolition has been actually decreed, the matter assumes 
an entirely different shape, seeing that it is not now an 
abolition, but the refraining from revoking an abolition, 
that is proposed to be suggested to the king ; that, if the 
king were to do this, he would warrant amongst his own 
people the injurious imputation, more than once brought 
against his former government, of countenancing the 
work of undoing and overturning, and would, at the same 
time, confirm foreign nations, and particularly the English, 
in the belief that he had adopted a systematic opposition 
to hberal principles and views ; that, therefore, the inter- 
ests of the king not less than those of humanity seem to 
call upon the Alhes to give, formally and without delay, 
the weight of their influence in favor, as far as relates to 
France, of an entire and immediate abolition of the slave 
trade, an abolition, the necessity of which has, in principle 
at least, been acknowledged in the transactions of the 
Congress of Vienna." 



258 /Six Xessons. 

Now, as to the several faulty expressions in the note of 
Castlereagh, though I have made great use of italics, I 
have not pointed out one-half of the faults. Whoever 
before heard of a reason to foresee a thing? He meant 
reason to believe that the thing would take place, and as 
it was a thing to be wished not to take place, to apprehend 
was the word ; because to apprehend means to think of 
with some degree of fear. Wishing to-morrow to be a 
fine day, what would you think of me if I were to say 
that I had reason to foresee that it would rain? The 
might is clearly wrong. If the abolition were total, what 
had peremptory to do there? Could it be more than 
total? The nevertheless had no business there. He was 
about to give reasons why the abolition decree ought to 
be confirmed ; but he had stated no reasons given by any- 
body why it should not. To lose no time to maintain; 
and then the in France, and then the immediate; alto- 
gether there is such a mass of confusion that one cannot 
describe it. " To maintain in France^'' would lead one 
to suppose that there was, or had been, a slave trade in 
France. The next part, beginning with '■'■that if'' sets 
all criticism at defiance. Look at the verbs could wish, 
and should be! Look at of having. Then com^^ prohi- 
bition for abolition, two very different things. To assume 
entirely a different shape is very different from to assume 
an entirely different shape. The latter is meant and the 
former is said. Then what does the /or do there? What 
consequence is he coming to? How was he going to 
show that the shape was different ? He attempts to show 
no such thing; but falls to work to foretell the evils 
which will fall on the King of France if he revoke Na- 
poleon's decree. And here. Goddess of Grub-street, do 
hear him talking of the King of France giving himself 
the disadvantage of authorizing reproaches! If the 
king's conduct would justify peoj)le in believing ill of 
him, why should it justify the English in particular? 



Lord CastlereagJi^s Note. 259 

They might, indeed, be more ready to beHeve ill of him ; 
but it could not be more just in them than in others. 
An opposition to ideas is a pretty idea enough ; and so 
is the giving of loeight in France to an immediate pro- 
hibition ! 

Never was there, surely, such a piece of writing seen 
before ! Fifty years hence, no man who should read it 
would be able to ascertain its meaning. I am able to 
pick it out, because, and only because, I am acquainted 
with the history of the matter treated of. And yet, most 
momentous transactions, transactions involving the fate 
of milhons of human beings, have been committed to the 
hands of this man! 

It is not unnecessary for me to observe that, though I 
have stated the meaning of this note in a way for it to be 
understood, I by no means think, that even in the words 
in which I have expressed it, it was a proper note for the 
occasion. It was false in professions; and it was, as 
towards the King of France, insolent in a high degree. 
Even if it had been just to compel the king to abolish 
the slave trade, the matter might have been expressed in 
a less offensive manner ; and, at any rate, he might have 
been spared the brutal taunt that we meet with towards 
the close of this matchless specimen of diplomatic stu- 
pidity. 

Hoping that this book will outlive the recollection of 
the transactions treated of by the papers on which I have 
been remarking, it seems no more than justice to the 
parties to say that the abolition, which was thus extorted, 
had effect but for a very short time; and the French 
nation never acknowledged it as binding; that at this 
moment (June, 1822), complaints are made in the House 
of Commons of the breach of agreement on the part of 
the French ; that the French have revived and do cany 
on the traffic in African slaves ; that our ministers promise 
to make remonstrance; but that they dare not talk of 



260 Six JOessons. ■ 

waxTand that without declaring their readiness for war, 
their remonstrances can have no eifect. 



LESSON VI. 

RemarJcs on passages in Dispatches from the Marquis 
"Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to discount 
Sidmouth, and to Mr. Peel, Secretaries of State; dated 
Dublin Castle, from 3f? January to VUh June, 1822 ; 
and also on the charge of the Bishop op Winchester, 
delivered in J%dy, 1822. 

31. ' ' Concluding that your lordship liad heen apprised, before my 
arrival in Dublin, of every important circumstance respecting the 
unhappy disturbances which Jiave prevailed in this country, I pro- 
ceed to submit to you, for his Majesty's consideration, such informa- 
tion as I have received on that subject during the few days that I 
have passed since my succession to this government. 

82. ' ' I propose to arrange this information loith reference to each 
county respectively, for the purpose of facilitating a comparison with 
such statements as may already be in your lordship's possession, 
and of enabling you to form a judgment of the relative state of each 
particular district at the different -periods of time specified in ea^h 
document.'''' 

The marquis's style is not, in general, lovj and clumsy/ 
it has the opposite faults, affectation and foppishness; 
and where the meaning of the writer is obscure, it is not 
so much because he has not a clear head as because he 
cannot condescend to talk in the language and manner of 
common mortals. 

'■'•Had heen apprised before of disturbances lohich have 
prevailed" presents great confusion as to times. We 
can hardly come at the precise meaning. It should have 
been : " Concluding that, before my arrival, your lordshij) 
was apprised of every important circumstance respecting 
the unhappy disturbances prevailing in this country." 
For the prevalence was still in existence. To submit is 



Marquis Wellesleys Dispatches. 261 

to place at the disposal of, to put under the power of/ 
and, therefore, transmit, or send, was the proper word ; 
for it is the king to whom the information is sxd)mitted. 
The marquis sent the information to Lord Sidmouth that 
he might submit it to the king. 

'■'■Succession to this governmenV is a strangely pompous 
phrase at best. But it is not correct ; for his succession 
(if it were one) took jolace at his appointment/ and he is 
about to sj)eak of what he has learned since his arrival 
in Dubhn ; and why not say arrival? 

The 32d paragraph is, perhaps, as complete a specimen of 
smoothness in words and of obscui'ity in meaning as ever 
found its way upon paper ; and yet this was an occasion 
for being particularly clear, seeing that the marquis was 
here explaining the plan of his dispatch. With reference 
to, means in relation to, as appertaining to, having a view 
towards. The first is the best for the marquis : and that 
is little short of nonsense ; for what is arranging infor- 
mation in relation to each county? What does it mean? 
Not what the marquis thought he was saying, which was 
that he proposed to speak of the state of all the counties, 
and that the information relating to each county he 
meant to place under a separate head. This was what hd 
meant ; but this he does not say. 

And then again, what does respectively do here after 
each? Respectively means particularly or relatively / 
and as he had before said, or meant to say, that he pro- 
posed to place the information relating to each county 
under the head of that county, what need was there of 
the addition of this long and noisy adverb ? 

To be sure, to place the information under separate 
heads, each head confining itself to the information relat- 
ing to one county, was a very good way of facilitating a 
comparison of this information with that which was 
already in Lord Sidmouth's possession; but it was not 
enough to say ^'■facilitating a comparison with such 



262 Six Lessons. 

statements f and thei'e appears, besides, to be no reason 
to conclude that the information before possessed was 
arranged according to counties; on the contrary, the 
marquis's layiag down of his plan would induce us 
to suppose that the arrangement of his matter was 
new. 

The latter part of the sentence is all confusion. The 
marquis means that, by placing his information as before 
described, he shall enable Lord Sidmouth to form a judg- 
ment of the state of each district, now, compared with 
the state in 7/hich it was at the date of the former 
inform,ation. The " relative state of each particular dis- 
trict " may mean its state at one period cotnpared tniih its 
state at another period; but " at different periods of 
time " by no means gives us this idea. And, even if it 
did, what are we to do with the " each document " at the 
close? Each means one of tioo, one of more than one. 
So that here we have the relative state of a district at the 
different periods of time specified in one document; and 
the main point that the marquis was driving at was to 
show Lord Sidmouth the manner in which he was going 
to enable him to compare the contents of the present 
document with those of the documents already held iu 
his possession. 

I have taken here the first two sentences of the dis- 
patch. They are a fan- specimen of the marquis's style, 
the great characteristic of which is obscurity arising from 
affectation. What he meant was this: "I propose to 
place the information relating to each county under a 
distinct head, for the purpose of facilitating a comparison 
of this information with that which your lordship may 
already possess, and also for the purpose of enabling you 
to form a judgment of the present state of each county, 
compared with the state in which it was at the date of 
former dispatches." And Avould it not have been better 
to write thus than to put upon paper a parcel of words, 



Marquis Wellesleys Dispatches, 263 

the meaning of which, even if you read them a hundred 
times over, must still remain, a matter of uncertaitity "? 

But there is another fault here; and that is, all the 
latter part of the sentence is a mere redundancy/ for of 
what was Lord Sidmouth to "form a judgment f A 
judgment of the comparative state of the country at the 
two periods % "What could this be more than the making 
of the comparison? Judgment, in this case, means 
opinion; and if the marquis had said that his object 
was to enable Lord Sidmouth to form a judgment as to 
what ought to he done, for instance, in consequence of the 
change in the state of the country, there would have been 
some sense in it ; but to enable him to see the change was 
all that the marquis was talking about ; and the very act 
of making the comparison was to discern, ox judge of, the 
change. 

It is not my intention to swell out these remarks, or,, 
with this dispatch before me, I could go on to a great 
extent indeed. Some few passages I cannot, however,, 
refrain from just pointing out to you. 

33. ' ' The commanding officer at Bantry reports a daring attack 
made a few nights previously, on several very respectable houses 
in the immediate vicinity of that town, by a numerous banditti, who 
succeeded in obtaining arms from many ; and the officer stationed 
at Skibbereen states Ids oiyinion that the spirit of disaffection, which 
Tiad been confined to tlie northern baronies of the county, had spread 
in an alaiTaing measure through the whole of "West Carbmy ; that 
nightly meetings are held at various places on the coast, and that 
bands of offenders assemble, consisting of not less than three hun- 
dred in each band. 

34. "It further appears, from various communications, that flie 
greater part of the population of the northern part of the county of 
Cork had assembled in the mountains, and that they have in some 
places made demonstrations of attack, and in others have committed 
outrages by day, with increased force and boldness." 

"Heports an attack" is of the slang m^ilitary, and 
should not have forced its way into this dispatch. *^ States 
his opinion that," is little better. But it is to the strange 



264 Six Wessons. 

confusion in the times of the verbs that I here wish to 
direct your attention. This is a fault the marquis very 
frequently commits. 

I cannot help drawing your attention to "a numerous banditti" 
and ■'^not less than three hundred men." Banditti is plural, and 
therefore the a ought to be left out. Less is the comparative of 
little, used witli reference to quantity ; but men are not a quantity, 
"but a number, and the comparative of few, which is fewer, ought to 
have been used here. 

S5. '' ' The magistrates resident at Dunmanaway report tJiat illegal 
' oaths liavefor a long time been administered in that neighborhood; 
tliat nocturnal meetings have frequently been held; that in the 
adjoining parishes, notices of an inflammatory description have 
been posted; and, in one. parish, arms have been taken from the 
peaceable inhabitants. 

36. ' ' The Rector of reports, on the 10th, that six houses of 

liis parishioners had been attacked on the preceding night, and 
some arms obtained from them, and then an attempt had been 
made to assassinate Captain Bernard, an active yeomanry officer, 
Tvhen only a short distance behind his corps, but that, owing to the 
pistol presented at him missing fire, he escaped, and his brother 
shot the assailant." 

"We do not know from the words '■^ have for a long time 
henn administered," whether the oaths were administered 
a long time ago, or are now, and long have been adminis- 
tering. The that should have been repeated between the 
nnd and the in towards the close of paragraph 35 ; for 
the want of it takes the last fact out of the report of the 
magistrates, and makes it an assertion of the marquis. 
The same remark applies to the 36th paragraph, where, 
for the want of the that between the and and the then, it 
is the marquis, and not the rector, who asserts the fact 
of an attempt to assassinate the captain. An odd sort of 
an attempt to assassinate, by-the-bye, seeing that it was 
made by a pistol openly presented at him, and that, too, 
when his troop was just on before, and when his brother 
w^as so near at hand as to be able to shoot the assailant! 
!But assassinate is become a fashionable word in such cases. 



Marquis "Wellesleys Dispatches. 265 

. 37. " On the evening of the same day a detachment of the 11th 
Regiment was attacked, on its march from Macroom to Bandon, 
by a party of sixty men, who followed it for three miles, and took 
advantage of the inclosiires to fire, and to retard the march of the 
king's troops." 

The meaning is that the party of sixty men followed it 
(the regiment), took advantage of the inclosui-es to fire on 
it, and to retard its march ; but the marquis, from a ds- 
su-e to ^YT\ieJine, leaves us in doubt yfh.eih.ev the regimeixt 
and the king's troops be the same body of men ; and this 
doubt is, indeed, countenanced by the almost incredible 
circumstance that a regular regiment should he followed 
for three miles, and actually have its march retarded by 
sixty menJ 

38. "A countryman's house is also stated to have been attacked 
by forty men, well mounted and armed, who severely beat and 

wounded him, and took his horse. > reports an attack on the 

house of Mr. Sweet, near Macroom, who, having received previous 
intimation of the attack, and having prepared for defence, suc- 
ceeded in repulsing the assailants, about two hundred in number, 
with a loss of two killed, who were carried off by their associates, 
although their horses were secured." 

Here we have reports an attack again; but your atten- 
tion is called to the latter part of the paragraph, where 
it would appear that Mr. Sweet sustained a loss of tv)o 
killed; and yet these two dead men were carried off by 
their assailants. If the marquis had stopped at the word 
killed, it would have been impossible not to understand 
him to mean that Mi-. Sweet had two of his men killed. 

39. "A magistrate communicates that information had been 
received by him of several intended attacks upon houses in that 
neighborhood, but that they had been prevented by the judicious 
employment of the police, stationed at Sallans, under the Peace 
Preservation Act." 

By employing the police in a judicious manner, the 
marquis means ; but says quite another thing. 
40 ' ' The police magistrate at Westmeath reports the setting fire 
12 



266 Six Lessons. 

to a fanner's outhouses, which, together with the cattle in them, 
WAS consumed." 

It should be " the setting of fire ;" and it should be 
toere, and not teas; for the deuce is in it if out-houses, 
together with the cattle in them, do not make up di, plural. 

41. "The remit of the facts stated in this dispatch, andfits inclo^- 
ures, seems to justify an opinion that, although no material change 
has occurred in any other part of Ireland, the disturbances in the 
vicinity of Macroom have assumed a more decided aspect of general 
disorder, and accordingly I have resorted to additional measures of 
precaution and military operation." 

There should be an in between the and and the its. 
But, it is not the result of the facts that seems to justify 
the opinion ; it is the facts themselves that justify the 
opinion, and the opinion is the result. Measures of 
m,ilitary operation, too, is an odd sort of phrase. This 
paragraph is all bad, from beginning to end; but I am 
merely pointing out prominent and gross errors. 

42. "Another magistrate reports several robberies of arms in the 
parishes of Skull and Kilmore, and the burning of a corn-store at 
Crookhaven; and another, in representing the alarming state of 
the country, adds, that the object of the insurgents, in one district 
at least, has not been confined to the lowering of rents and tithes, 
but extended to the refusal also of the priests dues." 

To roh applies to the person or thing from whom or 
which something is violently and unlawfully taken. Men 
rob a man of his money, or a house of its goods ; but it 
is not the money and goods that are robbed. Yet this is 
a very common phrase with the marquis, who, in other 
places, talks of ^'■plundering arms /Vowi people," and who, 
by saying " six hundred and seventy-six firearms,^'' and 
the like, leaves us clearly to understand that he is at 
liberty to use this noun in the singtdar, and, of course, 
to say a fire-arm whenever he may choose ; a liberty, 
however, which I would, my dear James, earnestly recom- 
mend to you never to think of taking. 



Marquis Wellesley''s Dispatches. 267 

To confine and extend an object does not seem to be 
very clear sense ; and, at any rate, to say that the object 
of loioering rents and tithes has been extended to the 
refusal also of the priest's dues makes sad work indeed. 
Without the also, the thing might pass ; but that word 
makes this part of the sentence downright nonsense. 

43. "No additional military force, no improvement nor augmen- 
tation of the police, would now be effectual without the aid of the 
Insurrection Act ; with that aid it appears to be rational to expect 
that tranquillity may be maintained, confirmed, and extended 
throughout Ireland. It is, therefore, my duty, in every view, to 
request the renewal of the law, of which the operation forms the 
subject of this dispatch.'''' 

Did any man, in any writing of any sort, ever before 
meet with anything Hke this? Suppose I were to say, 
'■Hhe vyritings of ivhich the inaccuracies form the subject 
of these remarks," what would the world think and say of 
me? This is indeed "prose ^M?^ «*ar?." 

Cobbett means, of course, that we should say, "the writings, the 
inaccm-acies of which " ; but we can now say, ' ' the writings whose 
inaccuracies," which sounds much more smootli and elegant. 

44. ' ' With respect to Westmeath, the chief magistrate of police 
has stated the revival of those party feuds and personal conflicts in 
the neighborhood of MuUingar, which are considered in this coun- 
try to be indications of the return of public tranquillity, and from 
which the magistrate expects the detection of past offences against 
the state." 

One loses sight of everything about language here, in 
contemplating the shocking, the horrible fact ! For, what 
is so horrible as the fact here officially stated, that party 
feuds andpersonal conflicts are deemed indications /ay or- 
able to the government, and that they are expected by the 
magistrate to lead to the detection of past offences against 
the state! As to the grammai': to '■'■state the revivaV is 
just as good EngUsh as it would be to say that the magis- 
trate has stated the fine iceather. The " the return " ought 
to be "a return.'''' 



268 iSlx Lessons. 

45. "The early expiration of the Act would, at least, hazard the 
revival of that tyranny ; the restraints imposed on violence have not 
yet been of sufficient duration to foiTQ any solid foundation of a 
better and more disciplined disposition in the minds of the people. 
Even now it is believed that arms are retained in tlie Iwpe of tlie 
expiration of the law on the 1st of August; and although a more 
auspicious sentiment may exist in the hearts of some, even of the 
guilty, it would be contrary to all prudent policy and provident wis- 
dom, by a premature relaxation of the law, to afford facility to tlie 
accomplishment of the worst designs, and to weaken the protec- 
tions and safeguards, which now secure the lives and properties of 
the loyal and obedient, before the spirit of outrage had been effect- 
ually extinguished." 

" To hazard the revival " is not correct. To hazard is 
to expose to danger • and certainly the marquis did not 
mean that the revival of the tyranny was a thing that 
ought not to be />w^ in dangef. The word hazard had no 
business there. Another mode of expression ought to 
have been used; such as, "exposed the country to the 
danger of the revival of the tyranny." 

The semicolon after tyranny ought to have been ^fidl- 
point. "In the hope of the expiration'''' is bad enough; 
but it is the arrangement of this sentence, the placing 
of the several parts of it, which is most worthy of your 
attention, and which ought to be a warning to every one 
who takes pen in hand. 

^^ Prudent policy osxdi provident wisdom " would seem to 
say that there are such things as imprudent poUcy and 
improvident wisdom ; but, still, all the rest is inferior, in 
point of importance, to the confusion which follows, and 
which leaves you wholly in doubt as to the meaning of 
the writer. Now, observe with what facility this mass of 
confusion is reduced to order, and that, too, without add- 
ing to or taking from the marquis one single word. I 
begin after the word wisdom : " to afford, by a premature 
relaxation of the law, facility to the accompHshment of 
the worst designs, and to weaken, before the spirit of 
outrage had been effectually extinguished, the safeguards 



jBishop of Winchester's Charge. 269 

•winch now secure the hves and properties of the loyal 
and obedient." 

How clear this is ! And how much more harmonious 
and more elegant, too, than the sentence of the marquis ; 
and yet the words are all the same identical words! 
Towai'ds the close of Letter XXI, I gave you, from Dr. 
Johnson and Dr. Watts, some striking instances of the 
torong placing of words in sentences; and, lest these 
should be insufficient to keep so great a man as the mar- 
quis in countenance, I will here show that a bishop can 
commit eiTors of the same sort and greater in degree. 

Before passing to the bishop, is it not worth while to pause a 
moment to notice the remarkable fact, that, in the matter of outrages 
and violence, the Irish seem to have been just as bad at the begin- 
ning of the century as they are now toward the end of it ? What a 
familiar picture of outrage and violence these dispatches present, 
and what a time the English have had in governing the people of 
this ' ' ever faithful " isle ! The government has certainly improved 
since the time these dispatches were written ; and yet what shall 
we say of the advance made by the people ? Are all these murders 
and assassinations of the present day the result of English tyranny 
and injustice, or are they the result of other causes ? What have 
Uie Church, the press, and the schools done to improve the char- 
acter of the Irish people ? I fear that if these were weighed in the 
balance, they would all be foimd wanting. The French under the 
Napoleons and the Germans under Bismarck have suffered ten 
times more oppression than the Irish under Victoria, without com- 
mitting one tenth as many crimes ; and the reason of this is, that 
the French and the Germans are better edticated than the Irish. 
They have the moral sense to perceive that the commission of crime 
no more leads to national liberty than to personal happiness. Not 
the least important part of that education in which the Irish are 
lacking, is the practice of economy and foresight in the affairs of 
daily life. Out of every hundred Frenchmen, at least ninety-five 
save something every year; and the proportion of saving people 
among the Germans is perhaps stiU greater. Now I am positive 
that, among the Msh, not ten in a hundred ever think of saving 
anything ; and this is one cause of the misery and starvation that 
periodically overtakes them. 

I have before me "^4 Charge delivered to the Clergy of 



270 Six Lessons. 

the Diocese of Winchester, at a primary visitation of 
that diocese, by Geobge Tomline, D.D., F.B.S., Lord 
JBishop of Winchester, Prelate of the most Nohle Order 
of the Garter. ''"' We will not stop here to inquire wliat a 
prelate's office may require of him relative to an Order 
which history tells us arose out of a favorite lady drop- 
ping her garter at a dance ; but I must observe that, as 
the titles here stand, it would appear that the last is 
deemed the most honorable and of most importayice to the 
clergy! This bishop, whose name vms Pkettyman, was 
the tutor of that William Pitt who was called the heaven- 
horn minister, and a history of whose life has been written 
by this bishop. So that we have here, a Doctor of Di- 
vinity, a Fellov) of the Hoyal Society, a Prelate of the 
Tnost Nohle Order of the Garter, and a JBishop of one of 
the richest Sees in the v^hole viorld, who, besides, is an 
Historian, and was Tutor to a heaven-horn minister. Let 
us see then what sort of %oriting comes from such a 
source. I could take an incorract sentence, I could even 
take a specimen of downright nonsense, from almost any 
page of the Charge. But I shall content myself with the 
very first sentence of it. 

46. "My reverend, brethren, being called to preside over this 
distinguished diocese, at a late period of life, I have thought it 
incumbent upon me not to delay the opportunity of becoming per- 
sonally acquainted with my clergy longer than circumstances ren- 
dered absolutely necessaiy." 

There are tioo double meanings in this short sentence. 
Was he called at some former time, to preside over the 
diocese when he should heconfie old? or was he, when he 
had become old, called to preside over the diocese? But 
what follows is still worse. Does he mean that he thought 
it incumbent on him to become acquainted with his clergy 
as soon as possible, or ^?^ as short a thne as possible f To 
delay an opportunity is not very good ; and that which is 
of a man's own appointment, and which proceeds purely 



Bishop of Winchef^ter's Charge. 271 

from liis own will, cannot strictly be called an op^^ortuniii/. 
But it is the double meaning, occasioned by the wro7ig- 
placing of the words, that I wish you to attend to. 

Now, see how easily the sentence might, with the same 
words, have been made unequivocal, clear, and elegant: 
" My Reverend Brethren, being called, at a late period of 
life, to preside over this distinguished diocese, I have 
thought it incumbent on me not to delay, longer than 
cii'cumstances rendered absolutely necessary, the oppor- 
tunity of becoming personally acquainted with my clergy." 

How easy it was to write thus ! And yet this bishoj) 
did not know how to do it. I dai'e say that he con-ected 
and re-corrected every sentence of this charge. And yet 
what h%(j7igling work it is, after all ! And these are your 
college and itniversity bred men ! These are the men who 
are called Doctors on account of their literary acquire- 
ments, doctus being the Latin word for learned! Thus 
it is that the mass of mankind have been imposed upon 
by Mg sounding names, which, however, have seldom 
failed to insure, to those who have assumed them, j^ower, 
ease, luxury, and splendor, at the expense of those who 
have been foohsh or base enough to acquiesce, or to 
seem to acquiesce, in the fitness of the assumption. 

Such acquiescence is not, however, so general now-a- 
days as it formerly was ; and the chagrin which the '■'■Doc- 
tors^'' feel at the change is not more evident than it is 
amusing. In the very charge which I have just quoted, 
the tutor of the heaven-born minister says, "A spirit is 
still manifest amongst us, producing an impatience of 
control, a reluctance to acknowledge superio7'ity, and an 
eagerness to call in question the expediency of established 
forms and customs.'''' What! is it, then, a sin; is it an 
offence against God, to be reluctant to '■'^acknowledge 
superiority " in a bishop who cannot write so well as om-- 
selves? Oh, no! We are not to be censured, because 
we doubt of the expediency of those estabHshments, those 



272 Six T^essons. 

colleges and universities, which cause immense revenues, 
ai'ising from public property, to be expended on the edu- 
cation of men, vs^ho, after all, can produce, in thp literary 
way, nothing better than writings such as those' on which 
we have now been remarking. 

The nature of the faults in these extracts may, perhaps, be made 
still clearer by calling your attention to the two kinds of sentences 
called l0?)se and periodic. A loose sentence is one in which the 
sense is complete at the end of any phrase or clause in it, whereas 
a periodic sentence keeps the sense suspended till the end. The 
latter is generally preferable to the foimer. For instance; "We 
have learned to speak and write English correctly, in a few months, 
by means of this little book, in spite of many obstacles." This is a 
loose sentence ; so loose that any member of it may be dropped 
without injuring the sense. Now let us put it in a periodic form, 
and you will see that you can come to a full-stop nowhere except 
at the end. "By means of this little book, we have, in a few 
months, in spite of many obstacles, learned to speak and write 
English correctly." 






